Rememberance Day- Lest We Forget...

When I was young I always honoured rememberance day because it was very improtant to my grandpa. He was also my pastor and a man I loved dearly. He always tried to stress to the young people how men and women died for freedom and what a valuable thing freedom is. It was hard for us to see then; we had always just been free.
Today rememberance day is more significant to me. It is a day where I am thankful; thankful that someone would die for me and my children. Thankful that I live in a country where I can freely worship Jesus. Thankful for a country that is relatively peaceful. At the same time it is a day where I mourn the contrast. Gone are my days of ignorant bliss. All I want is to be happy and healthy and raise my family and love Jesus. But I know things about the world now and I can never go back. People are growing evil and violent and perverse and it has gotten too close to home. Now there is a new kind of war to fight and I realize it recquires my life.
I read a story about the "Montreal Massacre" entitled, "The Men Who Ran Away". A lone gunmen came to an engineering class and ordered the 50 men present to leave the classroom, leaving 14 women at the mercy of the gunmen. It is said that those 50 men meekly filed out....the women were shot at. Some died, some were wounded. Those men could've taken him out. They had a chance to prevent a massacre and they "meekly filed out" in order to preserve their own lives. Our society has adopeted that meekness. We see tragedy, enslavement and abuse and we turn a blind eye. We think we are protecting ourselves by doing nothing, all the while violence is creeping closer to our doors, peeking in our front windows. You can close your curtains but it does not go away. "Evil prevails when good men do nothing".
Every day our freedom to worship God is being challenged, from daily exchanges to the highest levels of government. Most of the church sits idly by; dumbed down by their anti-religious sentiments. There are no standards, no disciplines, you do whatever feels right to you. And if sleeping feels good then we sleep. While our foundations crumble down around us, while the poor are begging at our door, while children are being sold for sex in our cities, while our freedoms are being taken, we sleep.
John McCrae wrote this poem "In Flander's Fields", in 1915 during the war:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

It is said that his dying words were, "If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep".

In response to his poem Moina Michael wrote, "We Shall Keep the Faith":

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,

Sleep sweet - to rise anew!

We caught the torch you threw

And holding high, we keep the Faith

With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red

That grows on fields where valor led;

It seems to signal to the skies

That blood of heroes never dies,

But lends a lustre to the red

Of the flower that blooms above the dead

In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red

We wear in honor of our dead.

Fear not that ye have died for naught;

We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought

In Flanders Fields.

Have we learned the lesson taught in Flander's fields?