I love bumper stickers. I even love bumper stickers that goad my own sacred cows- theologically and politically- if they are clever. Crude bumper stickers obviously don’t meet the clever test so I especially don’t like them.
Years ago, while driving on I-4 between Orlando and Lakeland, I was passed by a truck from a particular meat company that had a bumper sticker on the top right hand side of the rear panel. It read, “I didn’t climb all the way to the top of the food chain to eat veggies.” I was all alone in the car and laughing out loud.
Some bumper stickers are not funny or clever, but good anyway. “Freedom isn’t Free” comes to mind as we approach Memorial Day. Freedom, it turns out, is quite costly.
He was in bed 8 in the ICU at Cape Canaveral Hospital years ago, a grizzled old guy struggling with heart issues and COPD. I stopped in to see how he was doing and introduced myself. “Chaplain, I don’t think I believe in God,” he said. “Not after all the things I’ve seen and done.” He was a WWII veteran. Sixty years later, he was still paying the high cost of his service, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I didn’t try to argue for God. I don’t do that anymore. I think God is much better at proving himself than I could ever be. I tried to be with him in a way I think that God would have been. “I’m sorry you had to do so much, see so much that has cost you so much,” I said.
Many have paid the price with their lives, as Memorial Day reminds us. There are many more like the grizzled old guy in ICU 8, veterans old and young walking around still paying the costs of freedom, whether active duty or long since retired. And their families pay a high cost as well- empty chairs on holidays, post traumatic stress, adjusting to deployments and homecomings and trying hard to maintain family relationships over the phone, on Facebook or Skype. Indeed, freedom is not free.
So another bumper sticker with a good message-not clever or funny, but good nonetheless; “If you love your freedom, thank a Vet.” My sentiments exactly.
Happy Memorial Day
Jerald
