No Shrinking Back

And just like that, it’s summer! Memorial Day kicks off burgers on the grill, salads and sunburns, and I often think it’s curious how traditions we now enjoy, that we’ve made a part of our culture, came about through war. 

We’ve heard so much war language over the last several months. COVID-19, the silent killer. One who goes about terrorizing the whole earth. 

This Memorial Day 2020, I remember:

“The great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him, …They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. …

…woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short…

…The dragon was enraged… and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring – those who keep God’s commandment and hold fast to their testimony about Jesus.” (Rev. 12 various verses)

These verses help me remember: there’s a whole backdrop to the way the world works. Like it or not, we’re in a spiritual battle that gets played out in the physical world.  I need to remember—Vietnam, World or Civil wars, COVID-19, family battles or any war in the physical world—is in the context of an ongoing spirit-world battle.

Let’s not shrink back from the battles surrounding us—both the physical and spiritual ones. This unusual Memorial Day 2020, let’s consider three things:

1. Remember someone who’s been, or lost their life, in battle. (Yes, include COVID-19.)

2. Give thanks for any freedom secured because they stepped into the battle.

3. What would you die for? What ignites passion in you? As my girlfriend, Kim, used to say: “If there’s nothing to die for, there’s nothing to live for.”

Remember all battles in the context of an enemy who is at war with us, who is literally hell-bent on destroying all good. This enemy is at war with God for all forms of life. 

We can do some serious damage to the enemy by regularly turning our attention from “fear of death to love of life” (David Hicks)—a tactic this enemy despises. 

I’m real because God is so real.