The Price of Freedom
“It is for freedom,
that Christ has set us free; no longer to be subject to the yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1
As you celebrate the
4th of July today, we can remember that freedom and independence are
costly. This country didn’t start out as a nation of free men and women,
but as subjects bound under the tyranny of an unfair English King. Through a
bitter struggle our forefathers broke those chains of bondage. They purchased
our freedom with their own blood and sacrifice. Battle after battle and war after war has been
fought for you and me. Consider the loss
of lives for our freedom:
- Revolutionary War (25,000)
- War of 1812 (2,200)
- Mexican War (13,000)
- Civil War (500,000)
- Spanish American War (2,500)
- World War I (116,000)
- World War II (400,000)
- Korean War (54,000)
- Vietnam (58,000)
- Persian Gulf War (300)
- Iraqi War (5,000)
My freedom was
purchased in blood on the battlefields of Bunker Hill, Yorktown and in the
numbing cold of Valley Forge in 1789.
Just more than 30
years later, in the War of 1812, once again the British Crown attempted to
place those chains of tyranny on us, only to be defeated. One famous battle
of that war, the Battle of New Orleans, was fought only because the two sides
didn’t know that a peace treaty had been signed. But the soldiers of Andrew
Jackson and the pirates of Jean Lafitte stood side by side to stop a foreign
power from making us slaves once again.
Another 30 years goes
by and once again, in 1846, we find ourselves defending our right to be free
when the Mexican Army attacked U. S.
Troops along the Rio Grande in southwest Texas. The Battle of
the Alamo had already given Texas its independence and the Mexicans didn’t like
it. Gen. Winfield Scott led our troops into the capital city of Mexico and
ended the fighting, only after more than a thousand men had paid the price for
freedom.
Less than 15 years
later an even greater threat to freedom was thrust upon us, but this time we
did it to ourselves. A great division caused our country to nearly destroy
itself from within. We became a house divided. The Civil War erupted at Fort Sumter, SC
and ended 5 years later at Appomattox
Court House, Virginia
only after freedom had exacted a toll of over 500,000 who shed their blood
before we would be united once again. Out of that came the Emancipation
Proclamation.
30 years went by, and
suddenly our freedom was questioned once again as the Spanish tried to take it
away. But the price of freedom was paid for at San Juan Hill when Teddy
Roosevelt and the Rough Riders fought against the Spanish on the Island of Cuba
after the battleship Maine was sunk in Havana. People sacrificed their lives.
Less than 20 years
later, around 1914, the next challenge came (which was 100 years ago this
week). Freedom’s price was challenged by Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. Once
again the high price of freedom was guaranteed in the trenches of the Argonne Forest and the western front in Belgium
of World War I.
24 years after the
“War to End all Wars” was ended, another war began. On December 7, 1941, “A
Day That Will Live In Infamy”, the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor took the lives of over 2000 of our soldiers
and sailors plunging our
nation once again into the cauldron of blood. Freedom’s price was heavy indeed
as America’s fighting men
died by the thousands on a little islands like Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Guadalcanal,
and on the beaches and hedgerow country of Normandy,
France
in World War II. Countless battles in fields and jungles all around the world
are forever stained with the blood of those who paid their last full measure of
devotion as the price of freedom. Countless gave their all
Less than 10 years
later, in 1950, blood was being spilled again at the Frozen Chosen Reservoir,
Inchon and Pusan when the communists of North Korea and China tried to destroy
the freedom of mankind. Those battles were fought on foreign soil, but they
kept our land free.
10 years later, in
the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, at Khe Sahn, and in the Tet Offensive,
and many more places, in a land called Vietnam that American would love to
forget forever, men died, and blood was shed in the longest war in our
country’s history. Though their sacrifice wasn’t appreciated or even
recognized for many years, over 58,000 soldiers gave their lives for the
freedom we all enjoy this morning.
15 years later, on
the sand dunes of Kuwait, and 10 years later, on the streets of New York, the
fields of Pennsylvania, the nation’s capital and in the mountains of
Afghanistan, the battle for freedom flared again and more men died for our
freedom.
And right now, in the
streets of Baghdad,
and in a thousand places around the globe, men and women are still paying the
price in blood for my freedom. To all of those soldiers, past and present,
and should the Lord tarry, to all those who will come in the future, who stood
for our country or whose blood paid the price for the freedom of America, we
say thank you.
But there is one
final sacrifice on Calvary that supersedes all
that have followed. In the midst of our celebration, we can’t lose sight of the
ultimate freedom that was purchased with the shed blood of Christ Himself. While there is nothing more important to
us than freedom, that same thing is true to God countless more times. Paul
writes, “It is for freedom that Christ
has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again
by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians
5:1 (NIV) Paul is reminding us that
“freedom is not automatic” but has to be well-tended. Whether we are talking about as a nation, or
as a believer, we have to follow God’s plan. Freedom is not an entitlement
but gift.
On this July 4th, we celebrate freedom as a
nation, at the very same time forces in the world are arrayed against us who
would draw us into a bondage and oppression far greater than the one that we
had escaped. The price of freedom, it is said, is eternal vigilance. We can
thank God for our national freedom and our spiritual freedom.
Terry Risser
Reflections:
1)
Mention something about America which you
are grateful for.
2)
Share what Christ has given you that you are
most grateful for.
Consider reading the Word today:
Copyright 2014- Terry Risser
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