Ah!  The sun felt good!  My windows were down, my sunglasses and Cleveland Indians ball cap dimmed the bright rays that glimmered off the road, and the smell of fresh spring air was intoxicating!  I had taken my mower, blower, and weed whip, thrown them into the back of my Ford, and was now headed into the center of town.  I almost felt like I was back home in Ohio on a warm May afternoon!  

  Only this was our little village of Balki, in Ukraine, and tomorrow would be a special day.  You see, six and a half decades ago, German Nazis occupied this village, as they did most Ukrainian towns and villages.  May 9th is Victory Day, when the final surrender of Germany was ratified, and for a people who experienced the occupation and humiliation of a Fascist military presence in their motherland, Victory Day has a very special meaning.  

  Or, at least, it does in theory.  

  Our ministry center is in the middle of the village, and as this special 65th anniversary of Victory Day approached, I daily looked upon the World War II memorial just across the street from our center.  It was there that the ceremony would be taking place, and it was there that the names were engraved of hundreds of men from our village who had given their lives fighting for their homeland.  Yet, I was amazed to see the dirt, litter, alcohol bottles and long grass and weeds growing up between each tile, step, and crack in the cement of the old memorial.  

  Now, it was the day before the holiday.  Tomorrow, the dozen or so remaining veterans of our village would assemble on those steps and be honored by the Ukrainian villagers who would crowd into the square.  

  However, it was obvious that the way to honor these veterans and the memory of their fallen comrades did not include anything as time-consuming as cleaning up the neglected memorial.  Instead, each store seemed to be lined with Ukrainians who were buying every bottle of vodka that their wallets could afford.  Already, the day before the celebration, many were stumbling around, half drunk.  Several young ladies that Oksana and I picked up from the nearby town to take into the village filled our van with the fumes of alcohol every time they laughed or spoke to us.  As I spoke with a local police officer, he shrugged and laughed as he commented on the fact that everyone was getting drunk and the holiday hadn’t even started.  

  As I thought of my own dear Grandpa back in Ohio, and all that he and his buddies had sacrificed in fighting for our nation during World War II, I decided that the best way I could celebrate Victory Day was to make sure that those few surviving veterans would have a clean memorial to stand upon on May 9th.  

  Several spools of weed whip cord and a few hours later, the old Soviet memorial was looking pristine.  

  The next day, while the villagers and local politicians were gathering for the ceremonies, I approached the aged Soviet red army veterans, their lapels lined with ribbons and medals.  I shook their hands, told them of my Grandpa and his service in World War II, and thanked them, presenting them each with a golden American dollar coin.  One of them grabbed me warmly by my shoulder and nearly hugged me as he thanked me and wished me the best.  

  As I thought about the holiday, the words of one of my Ukrainian neighbors came to mind.  He had said something like, “Anymore, this day is more of a party day than a remembrance of anything.”  People still go through the words and motions of honoring those who sacrificed so much, but there doesn’t seem to be much reality to it.  

  The whole scene here in Ukraine reminds me of what I just read in 1 Samuel 2:30.  “Those who honor Me I will honor.  And those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed.”  In this passage, God was telling Eli and his sons that it isn’t enough to bear His name, go through the motions of serving Him, and use words that seem to show Him respect if their lives were not showing Him the honor that He deserves.  Is every area of my life honoring to the God Who loved me and redeemed me with His precious blood?  

  There’s no use going through the motions of playing church, talking Christianese, and throwing in a few moments of token prayer and reading each day if I know that I’m not truly honoring Him and acknowledging Him in all my ways, and the trash, litter, and weeds in my inner heart are showing my real attitude toward God’s holiness and His Word.