By Violet Hassler, commentary
Judging from the lack of vehicles parked outside the gates of Enid Woodring Regional Airport on Memorial Day, many of you, like me, did not attend the service honoring our troops May 26.
As I dropped my husband off to attend, I pulled away in guilt. There were fewer cars parked than in previous years, and later my husband said it seemed fewer people were there.
I simply had too many things on my plate that day and could not attend. Soldiers are dying in the name of my country, for my freedom, and I was too busy to say thank you.
It’s not that my schedule was not important — it was — but Memorial Day is marked on the calendar early enough that there is no excuse why I could not free up my calendar and pencil in “show support to our troops.”
But I didn’t.
I was too busy, and I should have been ashamed, and I was. I only can promise to try better again next year. That is little comfort to extend to the soldiers and their family members, who have every right to feel unappreciated when I do not go even slightly out of my way to show them any different.
Then I got to wondering if God ever feels unappreciated.
After all, there are Sundays when I have had to drag myself to church with a mantra that it is only an hour, one hour is not too much to give to a God that has given me everything.
But in reality, one hour is not enough. We should do more, pray more, believe more.
The world we live in really has become so fast that I believe it threatens our faith. Too many times to count I have made a goal to spend more time with God, reading his word or communing with him in prayer or simple meditation.
It works for a while, then I get busy, and I slack off. Before I know it I’m no longer in contact with God until I wake up those Sunday mornings repeating my mantra before heading off to church. Once I’m there, it always awakens my spirit, as does seeing my brothers and sisters in Christ and sharing God’s message.
But does that wash away my uglier thoughts of the day? No, nothing can wash away that sin but the blood of Christ.
He deserves much more than a “thank you” for that.
I’m sure God feels under-appreciated. I’m sure there are times His back is turned away from us because of our continual nature to sin. I’m sure there are times He has delivered me from evil and was saddened when in my euphoria I didn’t turn to Him.
But the one thing I can always count on is the eternal forgiveness of Christ.
John 15:13 says, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
It is a line in the Bible often referred when speaking of our American soldiers. It was a line spoken by Jesus before he did just that — laid down his life for us.
They all deserve our thanks.
I don’t have to wait until Memorial Day to say thank you to a soldier. And I don’t have to wait until Sunday to speak with God. I just have to take the time.
Hassler is News & Eagle news editor.
