Honoring a Sacrifice

Since I am at church on Sunday mornings, I record CBS Sunday morning. On the few times I have been home, I have always enjoyed watching it. So I record it and watch it once I am home.

Yesterday morning there was a commentary by Martha Gillis, who lost her nephew to the war in Afghanistan on June 25^th. The same day Michael Jackson died. It was an incredibly moving commentary about how her nephew’s death wasn’t given the acknowledgement it deserved because the media was so obsessed with Jackson’s death.

This led me to think about the thousands of people who have died since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have started. Considering each person dying was a life snuffed out too soon…and each person dying had family and friends who love and miss them…and each person dying is one less person who could have made a huge impact on the world by inventing something, discovering something or saving someone’s life who could invent something or discover something. Considering this, shouldn’t we be paying closer attention to each death? Shouldn’t we be honoring each of them the way Michael Jackson was honored? These people gave their lives in service to their country. Yet they only get a brief mention in the press, if that, and their family and friends are left to grieve in the silence their country gives them…which is a point made in the commentary.

We should be ashamed of ourselves as a country and the media should be ashamed of themselves as news organizations that we ignore those people who make the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Then there are those who have been injured, sometimes in horrifying ways, whose lives are forever altered. Those people get even less press coverage than those who have died.

Please read the commentary. The link is below. And, please pay attention next time that brief sentence appears on the local or national news that someone has died in service to us. Offer some prayers of comfort for family and friends and thank God that they were willing to do what the rest of us weren’t able to do either by choice or by Life’s circumstances.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/12/sunday/main5153229.shtml?tag=cbsnewsTwoColUpperPromoArea