Two of the most majestic, heart-piercing places to visit in Washington DC are the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. Our images of both, taken during a cherry blossom-time trip, serve as a perfect backdrop to this tribute to Fidelity Month and all those who have given their lives to protect ours.

(In case you are not familiar with Fidelity Month, it is a new movement to celebrate the virtue of faithfulness in June by renewing our commitments to God, our spouses, our country and our communities. Please check it out and perhaps join me in using its promotional headers and memes on social media to focus on a movement that prompts us to draw closer to God, work to strengthen our families and heal divisions in our country.)

Surely one of the greatest inspirations for fidelity to our country is to remember the sacrifices given to protect and nurture America–the theme of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address.  Back in high school our chorale memorized Lincoln’s address set to beautiful music. I sang it softly as I read the entire address engraved on the south wall of Lincoln’s memorial. I’m so grateful to him for wrapping such beautiful words around the sacrifice of the fallen, calling us to give thanks and take courage as we rise to protect our freedoms in our civil war of worldviews and values. Please join me in remembering…

The Gettysburg Address:

Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation,

or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field…

…as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.

The brave men living and dead

who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here. But it will never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that those who fought here so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–

That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.

And that this government of the people, by the people, for the people…

…shall not perish from the earth.

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As theologian Francis Schaeffer reminds us, the Judeo-Christian worldview on which our nation was founded has as its central focus the call to each individual to be reconciled to God by faith and then walk with God, loving him and others and keeping his commands. That common commitment to God and his Word produced a common consensus as to what is good, true and beautiful. What is morally right and just.

In his Christian Manifesto Schaeffer wrote, “The Judeo-Christian consensus gave greater freedoms than the world has ever known, but it also contained the freedoms so that they did not pound society to pieces. The materialistic concept of reality would not have produced a form-freedom balance, and now that it has taken over it cannot maintain the balance. It has destroyed it.”

In How Shall We Then Live? Schaeffer gave a prophetic warning: ”When freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom. At that point, the words left or right will make no difference. They are only two roads to the same end. There is no difference between an authoritarian government from the right or the left. The results are the same.” Freedoms are crushed.

“An elite authoritarianism as such will gradually force form on society so that it will not go on to chaos. And most people will accept it from the desire for personal peace and affluence, from apathy, and from the yearning for order to assure the functioning of some political system, business, and the affairs of daily life.”

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We are living in fragile times for freedom. As Galadriel said in Lord of the Rings, “the quest [for freedom] stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while the Company is true.”

Hope remains because Jesus is building his church, keeping the Company true, and “the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matt 16:18). The church of the Lord Jesus transcends the red and blue divide, racial divides, cultural divides. We are called to love our neighbors, whoever they may be.

But that needn’t keep us from sacrificing greatly to preserve the rights of babies to be born and breathe free. To preserve the freedom of speech to teach our children that a man is a man, and a woman is a woman as God made them and sees them. To hold to the truth that corresponds to reality as God made it and God sees it. To love well when people’s hearts are growing cold “because of lawlessness” (Matt 24:12). To disagree with gentleness, yet respectfully work for a vision of community that research shows nurtures more joyful and peaceful lives, especially for children and the weakest among us.

In this Fidelity Month we can take courage from the example of our countrymen who sacrificed “the last full measure of devotion.” And from the Lord Jesus who sacrificed his life and then rose again to overcome sin and death. We can look for opportunities to love our country and contend for our freedoms in ways that reflect his love, seeking the common good of our friends and neighbors, being willing to sacrifice now, knowing we will live in the perfect freedom of Jesus’ loving presence forever.

Fidelity Month – Fidelity Month, Social Movement

Fidelity Month prayer

Almighty and merciful Lord, we praise You and thank You for all You have given us in Your great and unmerited generosity.

Please help us to remember who we are, and Whose we are. Grant us the grace to unite as one people in turning back to You with all of our hearts, with all of our souls, and with all of our minds.

Cleanse us of all that separates us from You, and help us to cultivate the virtues we need this day and always, so that we may grow in fidelity to You – Who are always faithful – and to our spouses and families, and to our communities and country, and thereby live in accordance with Your holy will.

In Your boundless mercy and lovingkindness, Lord, please heal and restore our land. 

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Amen