The sun is coming out as I’m writing this and as we prepare for this Memorial Day weekend. I hope your Memorial Day weekend is meaningful and reflective of the blessings of America and beyond for you. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to join you for today’s Weekly encouragement! message. It’s a gentle one after last week’s intense message. This Memorial Day weekend message is thoughtful and reflective, reflective. As a young person and as a child, I know I didn’t fully grasp the deeper meaning of this “holiday”. I knew holiday as a fun day, a fun word. But I still struggle to call Memorial Day a holiday. I know it’s a day off from work for some, yet it’s a day of remembrance. To honor sacrifice and to think about what this means. Individual soldiers sacrificed, whole families sacrificed because of one soldier, or two. Memorial Day remembers pain and this is why I struggle to call it a holiday. A birthday is a holiday. Christmas and New Year’s Day are holidays. These are all meaningful holidays. Memorial Day is a remembrance. It can be very joyful, too, to know that love compelled a soldier to protect his family and country. To understand that we are loved to the enduring of great pain, a soldier not hating an enemy, necessarily, just loving and protecting his family and country. What a gut wrenching experience for a soldier. A Father, not despising His own Son, but loving all of His sons and daughters and jealous for His relationship with them into eternity. God knows sacrifice. Not a pie in the sky kind of god. Obviously, because of Memorial Day, we can know that no relationship is pie in the sky. There’s been pain in our freedom. And freedom isn’t free as I quote the headline of Memorial Day. Everyone is affected by the soldier’s sacrifice. Everyone is affected by the loss and sacrifice. Everyone is affected by the freedom gained that wasn’t free to someone else. We can’t fully hold all the pain because it’s almost a duty to embrace with joy the freedom we have, to celebrate with our hearts the meaningfulness of Memorial Day and the freedom we have gained. It’s a responsibility to celebrate and live in freedom. Freedom from sin that Jesus sacrificed for and freedom for our country that must continue to fight to be free because of spiritual darkness that opposes freedom. I said this was a gentle message, maybe I was wrong. Therefore, I gently remind you that I’m praying for you because I love you.