Can we earn it?

Every Memorial Day I slip off and watch the last 15 minutes of a great film., Saving Private Ryan.  If you haven’t seen it in a while in the last chapter the character played by Tom Hanks, Lt. John Miller, is shot and dies on a bridge in Germany.  As he is talking to Private Ryan who his men have saved,  many giving their own lives to send him home to his family, he pulls him close and whispers “James, earn this, earn it.”  It transitions to Private Ryan as an old man viewing the graves of his fallen comrades, he speaks to the grave of his fallen savior, John H. Miller, “to be honest with you I wasn’t sure how I’d feel coming back here, every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I’ve tried to live my life the best that I could, I hope that was enough, I hope that at least in your eyes I’ve  earned what all of you have done for me.”

In life we must earn much, with our sacrifice and call to duty, our duty as a husband, a father, and for me now, a grandfather.  Our duty as an American. In the spiritual realm we need not earn our salvation, in fact we never could, the pit is so deep and dark that nothing we could ever do would lift us out of that miry clay.  But Jesus did it all when he gave His life for us.  We can never thank Him enough, and all He asks is that we will give Him our lives so that He can make them more complete and blessed than we could ever do ourselves.

Have a blessed Memorial Day,

the pilgrim