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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That’s exactly what those in military service do over and over again.<\/p>\n
I felt very little connection to the military until I married my husband.\u00a0 His father had a career in the air force, then retired only to join the army as a civil servant.\u00a0 He and my mother-in-law, a most devoted military wife, are both buried at Arlington National Cemetery.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 She even had her second child (my husband) overseas; he was very, very premature (weighing under three pounds).\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 That’s what military families do.\u00a0 And it certainly wasn’t always easy; she told me that.\u00a0 But, it was always understood; she told me that too.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 When we come to Christ, our life really is no longer ours; it belongs to someone else.\u00a0 And our “orders” really are issued from some other place altogether.\u00a0 And no, it’s not always easy but it is (or at least it should be) always understood.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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