by Joanne Wiklund
Today we celebrate Memorial Day. Flags are flying in cemeteries throughout the country. Parades and services are being held. Memorial Day was once called Decoration Day. It began when Mary Ann Williams came up with the idea of strewing graves of Civil War soldiers – Union and Confederate with flowers following the War. Through the years the day was observed in different states, always on May 30. However, in 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which established Memorial Day as the last Monday in May. The change went into effect in 1971.
I remember Memorial Days when as a student in Cordova, I stood in front of the Port Byron State Bank on the corner in downtown Port Byron, selling paper copies of the flower Poppy. The American Legions in small towns every where recognized the day. The little memorial cemetery at the North end of Main Street was the site of the observance in Port Byron. Everyone loved to see Jim Battern in the 1940 Piper Cub fly low over the Mississippi River, dropping flowers in the water to remember those military who were buried at sea.
The little paper flowers were a reminder of the poem “In Flanders Fields.” The poem, written by a Canadian physician in 1915, made reference to the poppies growing in cemeteries in Belgium and France where fallen soldiers were buried. The Poppy has since then been an ongoing remembrance of the Wars that followed through all the years.
War is a terrible thing. We have ongoing wars all over the world now. Too many to count. Little skirmishes, loud and agony producing large ones. Famine is increasing everywhere, people are dying not only from famine, but from all kinds of heinous events.
Our God is our answer to War. He knows what will happen. We have to stand for Him and His Son, Jesus, if we want Peace. Pray, people, pray for Peace.
Psalm 37:1-5 – “Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good; as shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.”