To The Unknowns

“To The Unknowns”

Text: Acts 17:16-31

AM

NOTE : Special Veterans Day Sermon

Intro:

This morning I would like to bring you a message entitled “To The Unknowns” Tomorrow is Veterans Day and many across our nation will be stopping for a time to remember those who have served to protect the freedoms that we enjoy. This year as we seem to be rolling to the brink of war once again, I think it is good for us even more important for us to remember not only the purposes of war but also the scars of war.

We have many veterans in our midst here this morning, and I would like to take just a few minutes to recognize them and their service.

Illus: WHAT IS A VET?

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry theevidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg--or perhaps another sort of inner steel: the soul’s ally forged in the refinery of adversity. Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can’t tell a vet just by looking.

What is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn’t run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, whose juvenile behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She--or he--is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another--or didn’t

come back at all.

He is the Quantico Bay drill instructor that has never seen combat--but has

saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other’s backs.

He is the parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals

with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass

him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose

presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor die unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean’s sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket--palsied now and

aggravatingly slow--who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being, a person who

offered some of his life’s most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just

lean over and say, "Thank you." That’s all most people need, and in most cases, it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.

Two little words that mean a lot: "THANK YOU."

It is the soldier,

not the reporter,

Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the soldier,

not the poet,

Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the soldier,

not the campus organizer,

Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.

It is the soldier,

Who salutes the flag,

Who serves beneath the flag,

and whose coffin is draped by the flag,

Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

This morning we want to say thanks to all of those who have served, and are serving.

HAVE ALL VETERANS COME FORWARD

Share Branch, Years Served, Position, and if War Veteran When and Where.

Lets take a just a moment and thank these for serving so that we can enjoy the freedom that we have in America. I told you that the title of my message is “To The Unknowns” There is a special place in the heart of the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington

D.C. called the “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.” This special crypt is guarded 24 hours a day by U.S. Soldiers, members of the 3rd United States Infantry (The Old Guard).. On this sacred site there are four graves. 3 of them occupied and 1 now empty. The first one was placed there on the morning of November 11, 1921, Armistice Day, at 8 :30 A.M. The casket contained a soldier that had died on the battlefields of France in World War One. On the tomb read these words…"Here Rests in Honored Glory an American Soldier