This week we have remembered and honoured those who have served and fought on our behalf to keep our country free and protect other vulnerable people. Many have paid the ultimate price, sacrificing their lives for us. Others have returned with permanent injuries or internal battle scars, living with emotional and physical pain.
In the western world we have enjoyed unprecedented peace because of their sacrifice, and we owe them our deepest gratitude. Though this world is still plagued by conflict, because it rarely touches us it is easy to take the sacrifice of veterans for granted.
Ed Leonard, a diamond driller from Creston, was working for a mining company in Colombia, South America, when on June 24, 1998, he was captured by FARC guerillas and held for ransom. Mining company and government officials worked to reach a settlement and free him. But Norbert Reinhart, Ed's boss, feeling deeply the responsibility for his employee, went further. He travelled to Columbia himself. On Oct. 6 he met the guerillas on a remote rocky road, and seeing Leonard said, "You must be Ed Leonard. Your shift is over. It's time for you to go home."
Reinhart offered himself in exchange. He carried $100,000 in cash, hoping they would both be set free, but the rebels seized Reinhart and held him captive for 94 days, trudging through the Colombian jungles. He slept in an open tent on a bed of ferns and shared his captors' diet of rice and beans, never knowing if he would make it out alive.
On Jan. 7, 1999, Reinhart was released and restored to his family in Toronto. When asked about his sacrifice, Reinhart said, "Leonard was a diamond driller. I know all the diamond drillers in Canada. I just did what I had to do."
Jesus Christ, like Reinhart, did what He had to do. He paid a ransom to rescue us from a futile way of living, not with money, but with his own life-blood. Peter says, "Christ died for our sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. ... He personally bore our sins in his own body on the cross."
We were rebels, going our own way and guilty before God. Yet Christ loved us so much that he took our place and died for us. We are encouraged to keep growing in a vital relationship with God as He has provided all the resources we need. If we fail to do this, Peter says we have forgotten that we have been set free by Christ's sacrifice for us. Christians still gather around the communion table when they meet together to share the bread and drink the cup.
"This is my body, given for you; do this in remembrance of me."
When we forget Christ's sacrifice we become spiritually stagnant. When we forget the sacrifice of our veterans we become complacent and apathetic, and are in danger of losing the freedom we so deeply cherish.
We will remember them.
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