Early on Memorial Day I got one of those calls that we don’t want to get. I was at work and my wife’s voice on the other end saying, “I think your dad died.” Well as the process of events unraveled over the next couple days you begin to hear the many stories of how he touched lives – some in a very good way and some not so good, like the time when he shot my grandfather in the posterior with a BB gun. But you look back on his almost eighty-six years and see many blessings.

He came through WW II having fought at the battles of Normandy and Iwo Jima on a naval battleship. He saw much action, but made it through unharmed. Would he say that the day the war was over was the best day of his life? Or maybe he would say the day he married my mother, his wife of sixty-two years was the best day of his life. What about the birth of his two sons? Those two days he might have said were the best two days of his life. 

Though those are great days in all of our lives, I do not believe that any of those days come close to qualifying for the best day of his life. I’m sure that my dad would tell you that Monday morning, Memorial Day, was the best day of his life. The decision he made as a young person to receive Christ as his personal Savior, was the best decision of his life. Sunday night he went to sleep and on early Monday morning he awoke seeing the face of God in righteousness. (Psalm 17:15)

All of us have physical life. To state the obvious we get it at conception. But we do not receive spiritual life until we come to the Lord Jesus and receive Him by faith. That’s what Jesus meant when He said, “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3 Because … “In Him was life and the life was the light of men.” John 1:4 That is why He came – to give life – spiritual life; “I have come that they may have life, …” John 10:10 

Our sin has separated us from the Lord. Jesus, the Son of God, came in a wonderful exchange. He gave His life shedding His blood on the cross and then three days later rising from the dead to offer eternal life to whosoever will come to Him on His terms. My father went into the very presence of God, not because he lived a good life. He is there because he recognized his sin problem and that there was no amount of good that he could do to correct it before a Holy God. He had received the free offer of God by faith. There is no doubt in my mind that he would tell you, Memorial Day 2010 was the best day of his life. “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” II Corinthians 9:15