John 15:9-13 [Jesus explained] As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye
in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall
abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in
his love. These things have I spoken unto you,
that my joy might remain in you, and that
your joy might be full. This
is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for his friends.
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Sermon - Memorial Day
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John Sayers - 1905
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A Brief History of Memorial Day:
On May 5, 1868,
Major General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of
the Republic (an organization made up of Union Veterans)
set aside May 30th as Decoration Day to commemorate fallen soldiers by adorning
their graves with flowers. General Logan’s order declared: “We should guard
their graves with sacred vigilance....Let pleasant paths invite the coming and
going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no neglect, no ravages of time,
testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a
people the cost of a free and undivided republic.”
That year, 5,000
gathered at Arlington National Cemetery to attend commemoration ceremonies
presided over by General and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant. This was the nation’s first
major tribute to those who fell in the Civil War, and at that time small
American flags were placed on each grave (a tradition that continues today).
However, the
decoration of graves actually began before General Logan’s official order, and
some two dozen locations claim to be the site of the first Memorial Day
observance. The majority of these sites are in the South, where most of the
casualties of the Civil War are buried.
For example, both
Macon and Columbus, Georgia, as well as Richmond, Virginia, each claim to have
begun Memorial Day in 1866; and Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, claims that it held
the first observance in 1864. However, one of the first documented sites to
hold a tribute to the Civil War dead took place in Columbus, Mississippi on
April 25, 1866. A group of women who were placing flowers on the graves of
Confederate soldiers (casualties of the battle at Shiloh) noticed the destitute
graves of the Union soldiers and also decorated their graves with flowers. The
first community-wide observance occurred in Waterloo, New York, on May 5, 1866,
with a ceremony to honor local Civil War veterans. (A century later in 1966,
President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Congress declared Waterloo to be the
“birthplace” of Memorial Day because of that earlier observance.)
By the end of the
19th century, the observance of May 30th as a day to honor the Civil War dead
had become a widespread practice across the nation, but after World War I, the
tribute was expanded to include all American military men and women who had
died in any war. Memorial Day has been acknowledged as a national holiday since
1971, when an Act of Congress established its observance on the last Monday in
May.
In 2000, Congress
passed the “The National Moment of Remembrance Act,” asking all Americans to
pause at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day for a minute of silence in remembrance
of all those who have died in military service to America.
(From Wallbuilders.com)
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