Memorial Day

I can't mark the day better than Ron Coleman has, who recites two stanzas of the Navy hymn, "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," and calls us to remember those who placed themselves in mortal peril on sea and land and in the air, to free us from fear of "the peril that our ancestors, in whatever place they were, lived with at every moment in their own homes -- the perils of tyranny, of arbitrary violence and of comprehensive destruction of their entire worlds."

This Memorial Day we are morally obliged to thank them, to remember them, and no less the God that has given so much victory and might to their hands and to ours; and to live our lives to and demand of our civilization a standard of moral and civic quality that merits the bestowing of such grace today and tomorrow.