May- Day! It is the call of an emergency. If one yells "Mayday!" he or she is in serious trouble. May Day! A day of spring celebration with the Maypole and games and flowers, etc.. May Day! A day chosen for whatever reason for communist celebrations. Labor parties parade on May Day! It is different things to different people.
May Day will always ring in my mind for it was a May first when I first stepped on European soil at Bremerhaven, Germany in 1955. I was a "green" second lieutenant recently graduated from The Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Germany was still an occupied country but only months away from those restrictions being lifted. A dollar exchanged for four deutsche marks. Today it is euros. The signs of war were still seen everywhere. The city of Mainz, close to my base, had been bombed on one night and was eighty-percent destroyed. This was the home of the printing press where the very first Bible was ever printed around 1456. That was probably the first book ever printed by moveable type. I was anxious to look around that May day in 1955, but was restricted from doing so because it was May Day! The Communist holiday made it a bit risky for military personnel to be out in public. I very quickly learned who our enemy was in that day and time. It was not Germany or Italy or Japan. It was the Soviet Union.
May Day brings memories, not of flowers and maypoles from childhood days, but of a Cold War following a devastating hot war which left much of Europe in ruins, and lines of crosses and stars of David across France and in our own country. Can there ever be peace here on earth? Can governments and treaties bring peace? You can answer that as well as I. However, to be honest about it, the only guaranteed peace is that which comes to the human heart when it is submitted to God through faith and trust in His Son! May Day!!!