Independence Day

This weekend we celebrate the beginning of this country as an independent nation.  The people who came to this country came with the dream of finding freedom from tyranny in all its forms.  In a special way they were people who wanted freedom of exercise – freedom to believe and worship according to their consciences.  For them this new land was truly the Promised Land.  The God who liberated the Chosen People and brought them from slavery to freedom brought the first settlers in this country to new freedom.  In all this we see God as the great Liberator, who through the death and resurrection of His Son, continues to bring people out of slavery to sin and selfishness, and gives them a new freedom as his sons and daughters.

The men and women who laid the foundations of this great land were ordinary people much like us.  They struggled and sacrificed to make a home, a livelihood and a future for themselves.  They believed that they were a people of destiny.  They felt that they were holding in trust something special for the world.  While some may see that as the egotism of all people who see themselves as closer to God, the reality is that those who have lost that dream of a sense of destiny, of mission in the world have lost something very precious in its heritage.  That precious thing is a sense of responsibility under God – holding in trust from Him something full of promise for the whole world.  Yes, we are called as individuals and as a nation to be that city on a hill, which gives light to the world.  God said to Abraham: “I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:2).  Individually and collectively the same words have been spoken to us.  The fulfillment of that destiny has been and must continue to be a vital part of the American dream.

Reflection:  In 1947, Peter Marshall was chaplain to the U.S. Senate.

On July 3^rd of that year he offered a prayer for the United States. 

It provides us with a beautiful reflection for us today:

God of our Fathers, whose almighty hand hath made and preserved our Nation, grant that our people may understand what it is they celebrate tomorrow!

May they remember how bitterly our freedom was won, the down payment that was made for it, the installments that have been made, since the Republic was born, and the price that must yet be paid for our liberty.  May freedom be seen, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to please, to do what is right.

May it ever be understood that our liberty is under God and can be found nowhere else.  May our faith be something that is not merely stamped upon our coins, but expressed in our lives.

Let us, as a nation, not be afraid of standing alone for the rights of men, since we were born that way, as the only nation on Earth that came into being, “for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.”  We know that we shall be true to the pilgrim dream, when we are true to the God they worshipped.

To the extent that America honors thee, wilt thou bless America, and keep her true, as thou hast kept her free, and make her good, as thou hast made her rich.  Amen.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Amen.