Price Tags

June 4, 1940. Our story begins approximately 5 miles outside the small seaside city of Dunkirk, which rests on the Franco-Belgian border in Europe, with a small German army squad.
The past few weeks had proved to be very beneficial for the German military. Belgium had fallen in only four days. The French Army was in the middle of a full retreat. And now the British Expeditionary Force, the core of the Allied Army, was pinned against the English Channel. To our German squad, it looked as if this was the end for nearly 400,000 of Europe’s finest soldiers…
There was a rumor floating around between the German squads that the British had begun evacuating their troops, along with some French and Belgians, a few days before.

At last, the orders came in. The German squad we are following were ordered to lead a final assault on the city. It looked as if the British were about to lose their entire army.

The hours went by quickly as the Germans stormed the city. With every small field and street won, the Germans were expecting to discover a huge mass of tens of thousands of soldiers crammed against the ocean, ready to be annihilated…
Our German squad finally reached the other side of the city, and stepped out on to the beach, in shock.
Looking around, they saw not a single Allied soldier on the sands. Instead, they saw weapons and equipment strewn about the beach.

The Germans then looked out over the ocean. In the distance, a few British battleships were sailing away, the rearguard of the largest evacuation fleet ever assembled in the history of mankind. The fleet was a hastily thrown together group of military, fishing, and civilian watercraft. On those thousands of ships sat nearly 340,000 Allied soldiers.

The prized jewel of the Allied Army had escaped destruction by only one hour.

That night, Prime Minister Winston Churchill stood up before a scared British nation and a shocked world and gave the most important, rallying speech of his life. In it, he sent a very threatening message to Nazi Germany. If Hitler wanted Britain under his “Third Reich,” he would have to kill every British soul on the island to claim it. Britain, he said, “will never surrender.”

Good story right?
So, some of you that actually read my blogs, are probably asking, “Come on Hackett, what’s your point?”
My point…

Price tags.

Price tags?
Yes, I said price tags. You know, those little things hanging off the sides of clothing at Target…
So what do price tags have to do with a WWII story?
EVERYTHING.

In today’s capitalistic world, we understand that everything comes with a price. From the shirt you are wearing now to the food you ate for lunch last week, it cost something.
So, back to our story…
The British evacuation at Dunkirk came with a heavy price. While the majority of the British narrowly escaped, 30,000 soldiers didn’t. They died, defending their brothers so that they could still have the one thing that we in America take for granted today…

That thing is freedom.

Freedom is perhaps the one thing that comes with a price tag so hefty…the price of blood.
Winston Churchill understood that better than anyone else of his time. Churchill swore to the world that he would rather have England die than be without freedom. Churchill knew what freedom was, he had tasted it. And once you have gotten a taste of freedom after not having it, it is all you can think about.
Yes, 340,000 lives had made it to freedom from Dunkirk…but the cost was paid for. The price tag was 30,000 people. Expensive, right?

History is full of accounts of freedom being paid for with blood. From the 30,000 who died at Dunkirk to the 300 who died at Thermopylae, freedom is dipped in blood. The two are inseparable…
God knows that; after all, he is the inventor of freedom. Humanity was enslaved to sin, and freedom was needed so that God and mankind could be reunited. The price was high, as it always is with freedom. The price was Christ. The perfect, only Son of God had to pay humanity’s debt to sin with His own blood… a price that was paid at Calvary.

It amazes me that freedom-loving people do not love Christ. Christ purchased freedom for humanity, and many people just don’t care. It is sad, but the freedom that Christ purchased was the freedom to choose, because if there is no choice there is no freedom. Had Christ died for humanity in a way that would have forced us to love Him, it wouldn’t have been freedom. He died so we could choose and have the chance to be forgiven by a loving God…

Hang in there, I’m almost done…

I would like to end with another WWII story, this one being a much less known one:
April 25, 1945 Leckwitz Germany. The European Theater of WWII was coming to a close. American and British forces were sweeping into Germany from the west, Soviet forces from the east. The Americans and the Soviets knew their forces would meet at some point. So, both sides had agreed upon a signal to the other, so that Soviet and American forces wouldn’t attack one another by accident. American soldiers were to shoot a green flare when they came upon Soviet troops, and Soviet soldiers were to fire a red flare when they saw American troops.
Maybe it was just by chance, or maybe it was God’s plan, but the flares were not fired that day as an American patrol leader met a Soviet patrol leader halfway across a bridge spanning the Elba River in Leckwitz.

Weeping, they embraced one another. They could not understand each other’s native tongue, nor did they know each other’s name. One thing they did know, however…
The once great cities of Europe lay in smoldering ruins, millions had perished, they had both watched their brothers and friends die for months on end…
But freedom had been won for Europe. The price was high; perhaps it was too high, only God knows…

But that meeting on that bridge decades ago points to something much larger…
Christ is standing on a bridge as well. He is ready to embrace you and weep for joy. All you have to do is walk out onto that bridge and embrace Him back. Laugh joyfully, sing with happiness, or cry like the Soviet and American soldiers who met on that bridge in Leckwitz, Germany…because freedom is yours. All you have to do is accept it, and choose to serve the one King who is and never will be a tyrant over your soul.

Look around you, the world we live in today is a “smoldering ruins” as Europe was by the end of WWII, millions have perished eternally, and you have watched your friends and brothers in humanity die all around you…
But freedom has been won for humanity. The price was high, perhaps too high, only God knows…

If there is no blood paid, there is no freedom. History points to that. Many people say Christianity confuses them. My answer to them is this:
Humanity was enslaved to sin, and a price had to be paid to set us free. The price was blood, Christ’s blood. The price was paid…all you have to do is accept it and follow the One who saved you.
Because Christ is the one thing that comes with no price tag…because He already paid the amount on the price tag.

In Christ,
Hackett