The Obamas and millions  of others today are participating in remembrance ceremonies solemnly initiated by our ancestors more than 130 years ago.  Here is the beginning of a blog I wrote last year about Memorial Day and its origins.

“If you haven’t already, take sometime during this Memorial Day weekend to stop and offer a prayer of gratitude for all those in the military who gave their lives for our country.  We are indebted to them for many of  the freedoms we enjoy today.

Our ancestors understood the importance of honoring the brave soldiers who died for the cause of liberty more than a century ago, and their tribute to Union soldiers on May 1, 1865 ushered in the first Memorial Day. According to David W. Blight, a Yale University history professor, former slaves created what was then called the first Decoration Day at the Washington Race Course in Charleston, S.C.”

The event was largely forgotten until  Professor Blight discovered its history while doing research several years ago. He wrote an article, which was published Sunday by the New York Times, describing the beginnings of Memorial Day. Thanks to Professor Blight’s work the contributions  that our ancestors made honoring our veterans, is as he put it, “no longer forgotten.”  He continued:

“Last year I had the great honor of helping a coalition of Charlestonians, including the mayor, Joseph P. Riley, dedicate a marker to this first Memorial Day by a reflecting pool in Hampton Park.   By their labor, their words, their songs and their solemn parade on their former owners’ racecourse, black Charlestonians created for themselves, and for us, the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.”

Let us today give honor where honor is due. Also let us continue to pray for all the men and women who are in the military and stand ready to put their lives on the line for our freedom.  I am grateful for the dedication and sacrifice paid by so many for the liberty I enjoy today. May God continue to bless those who risk their lives for freedom’s name and grant them safety in the barracks and on the battlefield. I found Psalm 91 to be a powerful prayer of protection and it came to mind for me use a I pray today for our troops and their families.  What prayer are you praying this Memorial Day?

Psalm 91

¹ Those who go to God Most High for safety
will be protected by the Almighty.
² I will say to the Lord, “You are my place of safety and protection.
You are my God and I trust you.”

³ God will save you from hidden traps
and from deadly diseases.
⁴ He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you can hide.
His truth will be your shield and protection.
⁵ You will not fear any danger by night
or an arrow during the day.
⁶ You will not be afraid of diseases that come in the dark
or sickness that strikes at noon.
⁷ At your side one thousand people may die,
or even ten thousand right beside you,
but you will not be hurt.
⁸ You will only watch
and see the wicked punished.

⁹ The Lord is your protection;
you have made God Most High your place of safety.
¹⁰ Nothing bad will happen to you;
no disaster will come to your home.
¹¹ He has put his angels in charge of you
to watch over you wherever you go.
¹² They will catch you in their hands
so that you will not hit your foot on a rock.
¹³ You will walk on lions and cobras;
you will step on strong lions and snakes.

¹⁴ The Lord says, “Whoever loves me, I will save.
I will protect those who know me.
¹⁵ They will call to me, and I will answer them.
I will be with them in trouble;
I will rescue them and honor them.
¹⁶ I will give them a long, full life,
and they will see how I can save.”

(New Century Version)

 

 

Related posts:

1. Don’t forget to remember on Memorial Day
2. Haiti needs our prayers, our help

 A couple of weeks ago, my relative prepared for a spring break trip by having her car serviced – oil checked, fluids checked, tire pressure checked.  She then headed south, driving the 579 miles to Savannah.

On her return trip on Palm Sunday, my daughter Olivia and I, who had taken the train to Savannah for my aunt’s 100^thbirthday party, rode with her. We left Savannah around 6:30 a.m. and drove uneventfully through the day. The check engine light came on at one point but was not a cause for concern.  I took over driving the last few hours and when the front end of the car started to vibrate, I asked my relative about it. The car started shaking on the trip down, she offered.

“I probably need an alignment,” she added, recalling how she had to maneuver in the aftermath of February’s snow storm.   “It’ll stop when you reach 80 miles.”  

After dropping us off in D.C., she made it safely back to her Baltimore home.  It was only then that she happened to notice the front tire on the driver’s side. The side of tire facing inside the car was a mass of threads and wires. How we made it all those miles without that shredded tire going completely flat or worse is inconceivable. Except that, we were riding on the wings of prayer.  

“I could have been dead,” she remarked Easter Sunday. As we talked, she repeated a few lyrics to Kirk Carr’s  “God blocked it.”

“We could have been dead,” I added, mouthing my remix of Marvin Sapp’s  “Never could have made it” and  a chord from the Clark Sister’s “Blessed and Highly Favored.”

“It shoulda’ been me,
It woulda’ been me if it wasn’t for the blood, 
 if it wasn’t for the blood.”

So without a doubt, I believe in the hope wrapped up in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. It is what keeps me going despite dangers seen and unseen.

————–

BTW….. I think it was great that the President Obama and his family worshiped on Easter Sunday at a church in Southeast Washington, an area with neighborhoods plagued by crime and high unemployment.  The pastor of historic Allen Chapel AME Church, the Rev. Michael E. Bell Sr., said it was “a monumental moment for us as a community.” 

Rev. Bell also described the President’s visit as  ”bringing healing and hope into this community right now.” Last Tuesday, four young  people were killed and five were injured in a senseless drive-by shooting in a Southeast neighborhood.

The president didn’t go to  Allen Temple, which began ministering to free blacks just before the Civil War,  to speak. He and his family went to worship, and from the story and video  in The Washington Post it appears that what they did.  It has been difficult for the First Family to find a church home here, the president has said, because his visits are intrusive to the regular churchgoers.

 Continue to pray for our President and his family, our country and its leaders.

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Hurricanes, food crises and tropical storms have buffeted the Caribbean nation in recent years, each time leaving it worse off than before. And Tuesday the quake in Port-au-Prince with a magnitude of  7.0 begged the questions of why and how much can one small, acutely impoverished place bear? Why in Haiti where 80 percent of  the nation’s nearly nine million people live below the poverty line? What’s going to happen now in Port-au-Prince, which was about 10 miles from the center of  the quake, and where two million people lived?

 But rather than dwelling on such queries, now is the time for offering  prayers and providing help.

I traveled to Haiti three decades ago and was struck by how palpable and painful poverty was there. I went there with an Atlanta  missionary group and got a close-up look at the despair and overwhelming need. I visited orphanages, schools, churches and even took in a soccer game. I walked through the shantytowns of Port-au-Prince and enjoyed the lush view from the hills of Pétionville. I visited artists workshops, and soaked in the vivid colors used in paintings and marveled at the skill of woodcarvers. The longer I stayed the more I saw how creative and resilient people were there.

It’s going to take that resiliency and great faith for Haitians to overcome this. And they cannot do it alone. President Obama directed his administration “to respond with a swift, coordinated, and aggressive effort ” to save lives. “The people of Haiti will have the full support of the United States in the urgent effort to rescue those trapped beneath the rubble, and to deliver the humanitarian relief — the food, water and medicine — that Haitians will need in the coming days,” he said. 

The president also urged citizens to contribute to the pressing  humanitarian efforts as soon as possible. Already social networks, like Twitter, have raised thousands of dollars. Wyclef Jean, a Haitian-born hip-hop artist, and other celebrities are soliciting financial donations as well.

 ”I cannot stress enough what a human disaster this is, and idle hands will only make this tragedy worse,” said Jean in a statement. “We must act now. … Haiti needs your prayers and support.”

Contribute what you can, as soon as you can. And pray for the people of Haiti.

Related posts:

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I had already started writing  a blog  for today on how my good intentions weren’t good enough and started to fold the news into that some kind of way. But following an interruption to take a walk, I returned to Obama and the Peace Prize. Why not became my question.  What some in this country see as just  grand promises that the president has yet to fulfill in his 9-month tenure, others around the world see as commitment from  a leader who is striving to change  America’s international relationships and build new roads to peace among the nations and peoples. Words too many Americans deem empty have  filled others elsewhere with hope.

President Obama in Ghana

The president, one of only three  sitting U.S. presidents to receive the honor and the first in 90 years, was awarded the prestigious prize for his initiatives to improve international diplomacy, eliminate nuclear weapons, ease tensions with the Muslim world and promote cooperation instead of unilateralism.  The prize award is so surprising because  Obama  barely has scratched the surface of  this work, including what to do about America’s involvement in two on-going wars. Yet the Norwegian Nobel Committee felt strongly enough about what they had seen and heard so far from this U.S. president to want to encourage him along.  

 Here in the United States, we  paint a picture of a president who is mired in policy and politics, whose elegant words fall short of  their soaring promise. In the broader world, many others see a leader whose visions for a new world signal hope. Hope matters, particularly when the present is filled with so many problems that seem intractable and when the actions and rhetoric of past leaders have alienated so many other nations.  Am I being naive here? Probably.  Is the Nobel committee playing politics in some way, trying to manipulate a player on the world stage? Maybe, maybe not. There are far sharper political minds than mine pontificating on those topics. 

But I do see a group of global people who decided to shake up the status quo in the same way that an overwhelming majority of Americans did little more than a year ago — all in the name of hope.  A paradigm shift remains in effect not just in our country but throughout the world. 

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said in announcing the award. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

 The commitee indicated they wanted to encourage President Obama to continue along this path of international diplomacy. ”We have not given the prize for what may happen in the future,” committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland. “We are awarding Obama for what he has done in the past year. And we are hoping this may contribute a little bit for what he is trying to do.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who won the prize in 1984, remarked, ”It is an award that speaks to the promise of President Obama’s message of hope.”

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