Misty Memories Worth Remembering

Cook County Star THE GOOD NEWS for 7/25/2009

The mist outside my window this afternoon reminds me of the morning we arrived at the Andersonville Civil War Memorial in Andersonville, Georgia. It had rained that Saturday morning as we drove the miles from south Columbus to Andersonville. The inequity between ground temperatures and air temperatures caused a mist to coalesce across field that had once been prison home to tens of thousands of Yankee soldiers. The fog shrouded the granite memorials in gray and draped a film of water around their solid shoulders that dripped like sweat from the ledges and corners of each monument.

As we walked, fingers lingering across the names of states and soldiers carved in the marble facades, the mist moved with us. Like ghostly memories looking over our shoulders it swirled around us, chilled us, reminded us. The morning was not silent, though silent might have been better. Mockingbirds, I seem to recall, stealing someone else's song, accompanied the awe that came from being reminded how horrible one brother can treat another.

The mist began to lift as we neared the slight depression in the center of the camp. The muddy spot that supplied the only water to the camp still squished underneath grass that then would never have dreamed of growing under the pounding of so many weary heels. We were only children, teenagers, but within only a year or two of some of the younger men once imprisoned in this hell on earth.

I can barely see the spruce across Cedar Grove Lane today, just as I could barely see the water oaks and sycamores that lined the edge of a historic prison yard I visited one July day so many years ago.

The mist reminds me.

The oldest living British soldier who survived World War I, to the Brits, "The Great War," died at age 113 this last week. He died with a message on his lips for everyone who would listen. "Remember." Don't forget. Don't forget those who died. Don't forget what they fought for, why they died. Remember.

Remember those who died for you. Remember why they died. Remember those who died to bring you freedom. Remember also the One who died to make you free. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister" (Colossians 1:19-23, ESV).

Jesus fought the war to make us free from guilt, slavery to fear, hopelessness. He gave his life on the cross to give us new life in faith. Remember.

That's the Good News.