POW Man...

Today I met myself coming back from Viet Nam. He was more than lean, he was emaciated. Tattooed and scared. Bald and bearded. His walking stick was lanky and bent, carved with strange markings and he used it to steady himself as he entered my office. His wife told me he'd been in a coma and that when he awoke it was a miracle he was alive today.

I noticed a patch on his black leather vest, the vest covered the leather like tan on his skeletal frame. The patch said POW/MIA. Being a Viet Nam vet I immediately recognized it for what it was: Prisoner of War/Missing in Action.

Upon asking him when he was in Nam he told me this story. His best friend Bill had been there the same time I was - helicopters. He asked me what I did in the war. I told him river duty: bringing in marines and supplying river boats. He suddenly began to hail my experiences with an awe and reverence I'd never thought about - not then or since.

When I was in the war, the nation resented us. When I came home they rejected us. Many of the vets were either injured, wounded or mentally scared for life. His friend Bill was one of those who survived the bullet wounds but lost his entire company of trusted friends only to come home and mentally collapse under the guilt of being left alive.

Suddenly, a flash back hit me. I began to quickly lose my composure. I had to get up and fiddle with some papers just to keep back the tears. I remembered the many times my own life had been spared. I remembered the many times my guilt's and confusions caved me in - countless times over the decades since the war.

I was blessed. I was spared. I was set free and the freedom continues to unfold for me day after day. My life has been given back to me. It was such an overwhelming feeling to be honored by someone instead of resented because of the war. My generation didn't receive the thanks only the shame of a war that made no sense then - but looking back it was for freedom we fought. Not so much the American freedom, rather a freedom for people - a strange people to us then - but a people who were and are worth the fight.

At this very moment I have friends who are the children of parents my own age who were those people we fought to make free. Another freedom fighter fought and won a freedom that will never end for whoever is willing to receive it.

Today I felt the appreciation that He must feel when one accepts his gift of freedom and turns their life over to Him. That freedom fighter is Jesus Christ. It was for freedom we were set free by a Savior - the Savior of the World...for whosoever WILL...

...because people everywhere are worth the fight!

THINK ABOUT IT!