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Memorial Day Sermons

More Sermons for Memorial Day �

So Much to Remember! � Exodus 13:3
Jerry Shirley 10 Things the Bible tells us to remember and never forget this Memorial Day and everyday.
What Will Your Memorial Be? � Matthew 26:6-13
Brian Atwood What others will remember us for - according to Jesus.
And Are We Yet Alive � Colossians 2:6-14
Greg Buchner This sermon tries to reawaken the "alive" in each believer and to tempt those who do not believe with the "aliveness" of Christ as we remember those who gave their lives for us. (Based on Charles Wesley�s hymn "And Are We Yet Alive.")
A Memorial That Really Matters � Acts 10:1-6
James May What kind of memorial will rise before the Lord concerning your life?
Memorial Day Weekend Sermon � Exodus 12:1-14
James Powell Sermon for Memorial Day.
Memorial Day: People Count Most of All � 1 Corinthians 1:21-24
Bobby Scobey This sees Memorial Day as a time to remember the deceased most important to the hearers: Christ, relatives and friends, and the military.
Memorial Stones � Joshua 4:1-9
Gerard Flury The need for establishing memorial or testimonial stones in our lives.
A Personal Memorial � Joshua 4:1-7

Daniel Austin It is important that we have days like Memorial Day to bring ourselves to remembrance because we are a forgetful people.
Build a Memorial � Joshua 4:1-7
Thomas Dibble Build a memorial of the great things that God has done for you in your life. He has been good to us. He has blessed us beyond measure. When we didn�t deserve it God was good to us.
Memorial Day � 2 Samuel 23:8-21
Steve Klink Respecting the sacrifice of those who bought our freedom with their lives.

Find more sermons �

Memorial Day Videos

Remember the Sacrifice	The Price of Freedom	Veteran's Day 4:3	MacArthur's Speech
Salute to the Armed Forces	American Flag	American Flag & 3 Crosses	Defining Freedom

Memorial Day Illustrations

More Illustrations for Memorial Day�

Memorial Day, A Time for Healing
Memorial Day, perhaps more than any other holiday, was born of human necessity. Deep inside all of us lies a fundamental desire to make sense of life and our place in it and the world. What we have been given, what we will do with it and what we will pass to the next generation is all part of an unfolding history, a continuum that links one soul to another.

One pleasant Sunday in October of 1864 found a teenage girl, Emma Hunter, gathering flowers in a Boalsburg, Pennsylvania cemetery to place on the grave of her father, who died in the Civil War. Nearby, Mrs. Elizabeth Meyer was strewing flowers upon the grave of her son Amos, who had fallen at Gettysburg. The two women shared their grief and their flowers, honoring each other's loss. So they agreed to meet again the following year, also agreeing to visit the graves of those who had no one to honor them.

When the ladies returned the following year, they found themselves joined by nearly all the residents of the town. The custom became an annual event at Boalsburg, and it wasn�t long before neighboring communities established their own "Decoration Day" each spring.

About that same time in 1865, Henry C. Welles of New York began promoting the idea of decorating the graves of Civil War veterans. The following year, the village was decorated, graves were decorated and speeches were made. As the Civil War ended in 1865, the women's auxiliaries took on the responsibility of preserving and decorating the graves of the dead from both sides�the coordinator chose May 30 for a combined ceremony to correspond to a similar day in France. In 1868, General John A. Logan established May 30 as an official memorial day to pay respect to all those who had died, in war or peace. He ordered his men to spend part of that day supporting and assisting in these ceremonies. The day was later observed nationally on the fourth Monday of May.

It is that sharing of loss, honoring the sacrifices of those who made possible the lives we enjoy today, and family connections across the generations that keep Memorial Day in our hearts ... and always will.

Source: John Shepler, Writing in a Positive Light.
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Praying Hands
You are familiar with Albrecht Durer�s famous painting "The Praying Hands," but do you know the story behind it? The painting was inspired by the sacrificial, loving acts of a friend. Durer and an older friend were struggling to make a go as artists. Recognizing Durer�s talent, the older man took a job to provide for both of them until Durer could complete his art studies. The work was labor, but he did it gladly for his friend. Finally, Durer made a sale. The money was enough to care for both of them for several months. Now his older friend could resume his painting, but the older man�s hands had become so stiff from the hard labor that he was unable to paint. One day when Durer returned home, he found his friend in prayer, his work-worn hands folded reverently. Durer painted a picture of these hands, capturing them for ages to come as a memorial to the love and sacrifice of his older friend.

SOURCE: Frank Morgan, Jr. Keys To Unlock Yourself. Nashville : Braodman Press, 1985, pp. 75-76
What I'll Be Doing for Memorial Day
Memorial Day is a day of remembering. Remembering can be curse when you�ve spent years trying to forget. It�s even worse when you get mad at yourself for not being able to remember. It�s strange that you forget so many things you want to remember and remember so much that you really want to forget.

Memorial Day is not a day for self-evaluation or selfish thoughts. So I turn my remembrances to other people, places, and things. But above all this, I remember people. Faces, personalities, and human events still crowd my days and nights with pleasure and pain. I can remember entire conversations and events in explicit detail. I cannot remember the names of more than a few, and I don�t know why. Shouldn�t this be the other way around? Of the hundreds I knew, I kick myself for remembering so few. Especially on this Memorial Day when I should be able to remember each and every one. They are the ones who paid for this Memorial Day. This is their day. I will not spoil it by forgetting even one of their number. God help me, I will remember. From this day forth I will carry their memory and spirit with me as a living memorial to their sacrifice and dedication to God, country, duty, and honor. They shall not pass gently into the night as long as I have breath in my body to shout to the world... REMEMBER, REMEMBER ... For God�s sake Remember.

Source: ames E. Leiker, served in VietNam with Battery B of 1st Bn, 11th Marines in I Corps from 69-71. Copyright � 1996. All Rights Reserved. Slightly abridged by SermonCentral Staff. For the complete text see http://www.vietvet.org/memday.htm
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The Little Narratives Matter Most
When I consider the power of these little narratives, I�m reminded, on this Memorial Day weekend, of Abraham Lincoln�s Gettysburg Address, a speech he gave in 1863 to dedicate a portion of that battlefield as a cemetery for the Civil War dead. It begins: "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." The whole speech, from beginning to end, is only 272 words long. It took Lincoln barely two minutes to deliver. But what most people don�t know is that Lincoln wasn�t the only speaker that day. A man named Edward Everett, who was considered to be a great orator, came before Lincoln in the program and gave an address that lasted a full two hours. It contained over fourteen thousand words, and it began like this: "Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghanies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet. . . " blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc. Now, let me ask you, which of those speeches is familiar to every one of us here, over a hundred years later? Lincoln�s, of course. Why? Because in just a few short sentences he captured the terrible significance of that occasion. It was not the actions of the living which would consecrate, or hallow, the ground, but the actions of those who had given their lives to defend it.

Source: Alan Perkins