Jeff Greenfield is an award-winning television journalist and author focusing on politics, media, and culture.  In 1997, Greenfield wrote about a Memorial Day observance in Salisbury, Connecticut – the community where he lived.  At the time of this piece, he had attended the same Memorial Day observance in his community for the previous 15 years.  He described the events of the annual observance:

At 10 a.m., the parade begins moving down Main Street.  It is a small parade: two vintage cars, bearing the region’s oldest war veterans; the men and women who served in the military; the Salisbury Town Band; the Scouts; the Housatonic Day Care Center; the fire trucks from the volunteer fire departments in and around the Northwest Corner.  We fall in line behind the fire trucks, and follow the parade to the cemetery.  There’s a hymn, and a prayer, followed by a Scout who reads the Gettysburg Address, haltingly, shyly.  Then come the names of the men who died in the World Wars, in Korea, in Vietnam.  A minister recites the 23rd Psalm, a bugler plays taps (with another bugler far away playing the echo), the flag is raised from half-staff, and we all walk the few steps back to the Village Center.  It is as artless, as unaffected a ceremony as can be imagined.  There are no speech writers, no advance men measuring the best angles for TV (there is no TV) and by the end of it, I — along with many other allegedly sophisticated urban types, are in tears.

The men whose names have been read indeed gave what Lincoln called “the last, full measure of devotion” — some in wars whose purpose no one could doubt — some in wars whose purpose will never be clear, some for the folly and arrogance of the men in charge.  When they fell, their deaths were a small part of a bigger story.  But every Memorial Day, the lives they never got to live, and the people they left behind, are the only story that matters.  That is why it matters that their names are uttered aloud before people who never knew any of them.  That is why it matters that we were there this year — and will be there the next and the next and the next.*

Every first day of the week, Christians all over the world observe a memorial – the Lord’s Supper – to commemorate the death of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Who died on the cross to save us from our sins.  Jesus demonstrated “the last, full measure of devotion” by giving His life for us on the cross to pay the price for our redemption and so that we may receive the gift of eternal life (Ephesians 1:7; Romans 6:23).  Read 1 Corinthians 11:20-30 for the Apostle Paul’s instructions regarding the Lord’s Supper.  Acts 20:7 also teaches that the observance of this memorial was one of the primary reasons that the early Christians would meet on the first day of the week.

Why every first day of the week?  Because it matters.  Every week Christians reflect on the Price that was paid for our salvation: the sinless Son of God died for your sins and mine.

God will save and give eternal life to those who place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from their sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  He will continue to cleanse from sin those who continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7).

Won’t YOU accept His offer of salvation and eternal life on His terms?

-- David A. Sargent

* SOURCE: Jeff Greenfield. ABC News InFocus, May 28, 1997, from www.sermoncentral.com

David A. Sargent, Minister

Church of Christ at Creekwood 
1901 Schillinger Rd. S.
Mobile, Alabama  36695

Archived issues of Living Water can be viewed and accessed from our website at: www.creekwoodcc.org