Our recent visit to a VA hospital was an eye-opening experience. Multiple parking spaces close to the front door were reserved for patients with spinal cord injuries and dozens of empty wheelchairs were lined up in rows outside the entrance ready for use. Just inside the front door, security guards checked everyone’s photo ID.
After passing through security, we entered a large crowded atrium. Many of the men and women were older veterans whose war wounds, if they had them, had long ago healed; but there were also many younger patients steering motorized wheelchairs down the hospital halls – amputees missing an arm or a leg – visible reminders of ongoing global conflicts and those serving our country still in harm’s way.
All of them – the old and the young – confirmed the words engraved on the black marble slab that greeted us at the entrance to the hospital grounds:
The Price of Freedom is Visible Here
Leaving the atrium, we rode a packed elevator up to the intensive care unit where our friend was a patient. A former ICU nurse, I was impressed with the cleanliness, the professionalism, and the level of respect and care our friend was receiving. “If a member of the hospital staff enters my brother’s room and they haven’t met him before, they greet him with affection and thank him for his service to our country,” our friend’s sister explained.
As we drove home later that day, I thought about those words engraved on marble and the visible price of freedom we’d seen in the woundedness of those laying in hospital beds and wandering the halls on crutches or in wheelchairs. I also thought about the visible expressions of gratitude from those who understood the sacrifice and acknowledged it with respect and affection. The price of freedom and the gratitude for the sacrifice were both visible in that place.
As I celebrate our national freedoms this Fourth of July, I will remember the examples of love and respect and gratitude that the hospital staff demonstrated toward those who have sacrificed for our freedoms.
But the bigger lesson in all of this for me, a woman who because of Christ alone lives and breathes and delights in and cherishes the freedoms I have in Christ’s visible sacrifice on the cross, is that the price of that freedom should be visible in how I live and love and in my expressions of affection and gratitude.
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” Ephesians 5:1-2 (ESV)
by Patricia Hunter (Pollywog Creek)
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Found it – GREAT post, sweetie!!!
Thank you, Allie! You are a sweetie, too!
Loved the post Pat…it comes from your heart and it is a blessing! We should always thank those who serve our country. Likewise…we must never stop thanking God for the freedom we have in Christ. Thanks so much for this timely message!
Thank you, Barbara. It *does* come from my heart. I suppose the message I was trying to get across is not so much that we are verbally grateful, but that we express our gratitude in how we live…that the cost of freedom would be seen by others in how we live an love.
Appreciate your post as it expresses the true heart of being free. My mind goes to a song Bill Gaither wrote: It the battle waged at Calvary that brought true freedom for all men and women all over the world. An understanding of that freedom makes earthly freedom more precious. Men and woman for ages have been dying in battle who do not know true freedom….what a challenge for those of us who are free to go to battle against the enemy of man soul. OUR WEAPON IS THE GOSPEL. My favorite part of the movie..Band of Brothers is when they declare, the war is over…if only it were true in the physical world. My husband and I are foreign missionary and people say to us all the time…thank you for being on the front lines. This is my comment to them, the front line is anywhere a Christian gives out the gospel, anywhere. This song is our battle cry.
It Is Finished.
“There’s a line that is drawn through the ages
On that line stands an old rugged cross
On that cross, a battle is raging
To gain a man’s soul or its loss”
”On one side, march the forces of evil
All the demons, all the devils of hell
On the other, the angels of glory
And they meet on Golgotha’s hill “
”The earth shakes with the force of the conflict
And the sun refuses to shine
For there hangs God’s son, in the balance
And then through the darkness he cries “
”It is finished, the battle is over
It is finished, there’ll be no more war
It is finished, the end of the conflict
It is finished and Jesus is Lord
“.. the front line is anywhere a Christian gives out the gospel.” Amen….and may that be all of us!
I have always loved that Gaither song.
Thank you for commenting…may the Lord bless the fruit of your work with Him where ever He may take you.