Saturday, June 12, 2004
In the third installment of Lord of the Rings, as brave King Theoden lays dying, having played a pivotal role in the final, dramatic battle for Middle Earth, he tells the hobbit Merry, "I am going to my fathers, in whose mighty company I need no longer feel ashamed." For those of us watching the events of Ronald Reagan's funeral, these words became hauntingly real. I commented to my girlfriend, "I feel like it must have felt when George Washington or John Adams died." These men have long been considered great presidents and when they died they went to their just reward. Our latest fallen hero is the great Ronald Reagan and he sits now with the heroes of old in the halls of heaven. In their mighty company he need no longer be ashamed for he has done well the work God had for him to do.
After Theoden's death, Eomer told his grieving followers, "Mourn not overmuch. Mighty was the fallen." Yet Tolkien tells us, "He himself wept as he spoke." Although all week long I had merely recalled the glory of the Reagan years and the victory he gave America in the seventy-year Cold War, and had urged people not to mourn much, for he lived long and did well, as I watched the final ceremony last night, I myself wept, not for him, he has gone on to a better place but for us. Ronald Reagan did so much for us. But as surely as I know he will be missed, I know he would not have us spend our lives in sorrow. He has given us a new world and it is ours to meet the challenges the new world offers. Let us go forward and fight, remembering Ronald Reagan in our hearts as we do Washington, Jefferson or Lincoln, and hold to the course set down by these great presidents.
After Theoden's death, Eomer told his grieving followers, "Mourn not overmuch. Mighty was the fallen." Yet Tolkien tells us, "He himself wept as he spoke." Although all week long I had merely recalled the glory of the Reagan years and the victory he gave America in the seventy-year Cold War, and had urged people not to mourn much, for he lived long and did well, as I watched the final ceremony last night, I myself wept, not for him, he has gone on to a better place but for us. Ronald Reagan did so much for us. But as surely as I know he will be missed, I know he would not have us spend our lives in sorrow. He has given us a new world and it is ours to meet the challenges the new world offers. Let us go forward and fight, remembering Ronald Reagan in our hearts as we do Washington, Jefferson or Lincoln, and hold to the course set down by these great presidents.
// posted by The Pendragon @ 4:41 PM 
