On this Memorial Day weekend, my mind rewinds 50 years. Few of us in a small Virginia community could find Vietnam on a map, yet it became so close when a 19-year-old body was returned from that battlefield, a casualty of a grenade.
I saw the "memorial stone" (the gravestone) just last week when I returned for a visit. The past that hinders and cripples us is to be forgotten, Paul stated in Philippians 3:13. However, we are to remember events and people from the past that have caused the light of freedom to keep shining for our future. I was 10 years old with a future that never included military service when this 19-year-old returned home after giving his all. All those military headstones at Arlington, Omaha Beach and in my boyhood community of Cypress Chapel, Virginia have fueled the torch of freedom for me these 60 years. "These stones shall be for a memorial."