For all my reading friends around the world, today my Country celebrates it's birthday, our Independence Day.
It is the one day each year we are united together as Americans; from vastly different and sometimes opposing perspectives and world views to stand side by side on the sidewalks of virtually every town in the entire country and salute our flag, watch antique cars, children on bikes and trikes, High School bands and our proud soldiers parade by us to our wild delight.
We eat entirely too much food and play lawn games during the day and wait anxiously for the darkness to fall so we can huddle together on blankets and enjoy the thrill of fireworks that remind us of the great battles that have been fought to possess this land and to defend our freedoms. We fellowship with each other on this day from afternoon until the last flaming spark fades from the skies above.
I have always loved my country, and have always been a fiercely proud American. My family members have served Her as volunteers. I have great and deep concerns for my beloved America and the direction our nation has taken over the past few years. As I see the American flag pass by in the parade this morning and sing along to the Star Spangled Banner I already know tears will be streaming down my face for I do believe America is a nation in deep distress...and yet I would not want to live anywhere else in the world.
In honor of this day, I am posting a collection of quotes to remind us all of our great heritage. This is the heritage we as a nation must once again embrace and turn from tyranny and a political agenda that takes us far away from our founding principles.
We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America. ~Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America
"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people...and for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth." President Abraham Lincoln ~ The Gettysburg Address
"It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. ... I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not." -President John Adams
"My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!" - President Thomas Jefferson
"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - President Abraham Lincoln
"We know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state." – Preseident George H.W. Bush
While the following verse was not written nor intended for America, I believe we serve a faithful God who desires we humble ourselves and pray.
"If My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14
May God have mercy on the United States of America~