It is good to be back with you. This of course is Memorial Day weekend tomorrow is officially the holiday and as you look across the scriptures there are some good parallels for what we do this weekend.

If you look for example back in the book of Nehemiah,

Nehemiah was bringing the people out of captivity, bringing them back to rebuild who they had

been in God, rebuild their country, rebuild their nation, if you will.

And one of the things they did in rebuilding was they went and set aside what was called

a Hall of Heroes.

That was so they would remember all of those who had paid such a price for them to be able to return

and be where they were and be the nation they were.

You also find that as Joshua was leading his people in the promised land after 40 years

in the wilderness, one of the things that Moses had them do was start keeping what they called

a Book of Remembrance because he pointed out it is so easy to

forget some of the things that have happened over these 40 years some of the battles we've won against

ag and basin you need to keep that written down in a book of remembrance and go back and see that regularly to remember who we are as a people.

And that's really what I want to do this morning.

As we do celebrate or do honor Memorial Day, I don't think we celebrate Memorial Day, we honor Memorial Day. It is a time when we look to those who literally have given their lives, those who in times of war gave their lives so that we can enjoy what we enjoy today.

You'll find that across America's history we've had a dozen major wars and over the 231

years of the nation we've had literally 43 million Americans who have put on a uniform to go face bullets and be willing

to die for the rest of us so that we can't enjoy what we enjoy.

As a matter of fact, you saw all those who rose just a moment ago we still have today alive

18 million who have fought for America in times of war not just war in the

uniforms but they've gone at and faced the bullets in times of war it It's a very costly profession. We have about 3% that once they

put on the uniform do not return. We have literally 1.2 million who have given their lives

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