This week in the United States began with Memorial Day, a day for us to remember all of the people who have made the choice to put the lives of others before their very own. Until this year, I never really thought about the parallel between the choice that people make when they enter into military service and the choice that followers of Christ make when they enter into Kingdom service. Scripture tells us that we should consider our brothers and sisters as more important than ourselves; and it tells us too that we must lay our lives down. That’s exactly what those in military service do over and over again.
I felt very little connection to the military until I married my husband. His father had a career in the air force, then retired only to join the army as a civil servant. He and my mother-in-law, a most devoted military wife, are both buried at Arlington National Cemetery. My mother-in-law was an expert at packing up and moving, something I did only one time when I was growing up (and even then we only moved to a different part of the same county). She even had her second child (my husband) overseas; he was very, very premature (weighing under three pounds). As a mom, I cannot imagine having a baby in a foreign land, especially a baby born so prematurely that he could very easily not even have survived.
My mother-in-law did it though–she lay down her life to follow her husband, who lay down his life to follow his orders. That’s what military families do. And it certainly wasn’t always easy; she told me that. But, it was always understood; she told me that too. I can be such a slow study at times because I’m just now seeing so very clearly that my husband’s parents, who would have been the very first to tell you that they were far from “religious” people, actually modeled for me more than most people I know have (yes, even in the Church) exactly what it looks like to lay down one’s life. When we come to Christ, our life really is no longer ours; it belongs to someone else. And our “orders” really are issued from some other place altogether. And no, it’s not always easy but it is (or at least it should be) always understood.
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