DAV Chapter 16 Orlando Installation of Officers

Tonight is the DAV Chapter 16 installation of officers. I am the Chapter's Auxiliary Chaplain and will be delivering the invocation. These are not just the words I will say tonight, but the words I try my best to live by.

Welcome members, friends and honored guests. We gather here this night to celebrate the future, as much as we honor the past. Each one of us committed to our veterans and to the troops serving in harms way in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is fitting this night that we consider the words of Christ from John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

Our veterans were not only willing to lay down their lives for the sake of their friends they served side by side with, but for their families and friends back home. For their neighbors and communities and for all generations coming after them, living in the freedom and security provided by those willing to die to insure it.

On the Lincoln Memorial we read the ending to President Lincoln's second inaugural address.

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

These words are cherished by the DAV and the Auxiliary as we strive to fulfill the promise to bind the wounds of the disabled by war and to assure the care of those who have borne the battle. To care for the widows and orphans left behind by fallen. Since the Revolutionary war many have been called to defend this nation. George Washington said that "The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." and this the DAV fought for because we believe there is no greater love than to serve this nation.

On this day as we enter into another year of working to insure the promise of care for the disabled veterans, let us be renewed in spirit as well. When we face a struggle too hard for us to fight, may God send us others to stand by our side. When we tire, may God renew our strength. May God bless us with holding our veterans in our hearts so that we never stop fighting for them, never stop learning and adapting to the needs of different generations and never forget those who had a love so great they were willing to die for it.