Before you, American reader, is the honor, blessing, and privilege of celebrating the 250th anniversary of our nation. A nation toward which God has been merciful, shining His great grace.
Being a Christian, the thing that most stands out to me about this anniversary is the part which the Christian faith played in the building of the nation. How God so kindly blessed our nation and caused it to be “awakened” in the Great Awakening prior to the War for Independence. How we had a Christian (George Washington) as a commander-in-chief during the war. How many of our Founding Fathers spoke so openly of God. And how our nation was founded with a stress placed on faith in God and freedom of religion.
America is such a beautiful nation! Yet we can’t worship her, or bow down before her as a god. The nation isn’t flawless, pure, or near perfect. I have to keep in mind that I’m first a citizen of heaven. To raise my country to the number-one spot in my affections, is to place it before God and make it an idol. I am a citizen first of heaven.
At one point in my life, I was tempted to think of 1776 and America’s founding as if it were another Creation story. But we can’t do that. Even our founding wasn’t perfect. Right from the start, Alexander Hamilton was conspiring to crown Washington as king (though Mr. Hamilton represented a people who’d just shaken off George III and his royal trappings). Following the war, the political parties started oiling their machines, buying men’s votes with whiskey. There were also armed rebellions, angry mobs, and other forms of civil unrest.
And while they talked a lot about liberty and freedom, each person seemed to have an idea about what that meant and how far he could go with his independence. They’d fought hard for it. Now they wanted to use it to the furthest extent, both privately and publicly. (Sound familiar?)
Even as I type up this article, I’m battling 100-degree days here in the south. It makes me pause and think of how the US Constitution was argued into existence during sweltering summer days by fifty-five patriotic men. Our country was blessed with the gift of a plan of good government which showed us how to use that hard-won liberty to its best advantage for mankind.
As we know, liberty, on this earth, will always be limited, flawed, and abused. Even with an immortal Washington for our president, a perfectly obeyed US Constitution, and every citizen a John Adams, this still country would not tick perfectly. Only if we’re in Christ have we found that perfect Liberty.
And while we are citizens of this earth, it’s also true that we’ve been given (by God) the gift of being Americans, and to be good stewards of this country until we reach the next one. I celebrate America 250 for what God has done. Friends, aren’t we super, amazingly, absolutely, incredibly, very, really, truly, and in all others ways, so blessed to be Americans? I sure think so.
