It is July 4th! Our nation is celebrating its 230th birthday. I love our country. Today I find myself traveling across this great land ( I am writing from San Fransisco during a 2 hour layover). On the plane to Denver and then the one to SF, I noticed that there were lots of people flying, who look like they came from somewhere else. Two groups for sure were Mexican and Japanese. I wondered at one point if this day meant very much to them. Hopefully it does. To be able to live in a free country, where we can come and go, where we can worship, where we can work and make a great living... is a blessing. That blessing comes into focus even more when you read the accounts of so much of the world who live under the oppression of regimes that line their own pockets, live in luxury, but care little about the basic needs of their people.
Freedom is not free. We hear that all the time, but in this day, when we have 130,000 troops in Iraq, another 25,000 in Afganistan...and tens of thousands in other places, it really comes home. Even in our own church we have several loved ones who are serving on the edge of war, or right in the middle of it.
I read something on the plane that caught my attention. One person said, "We live in a country where we make things happen... not in a place that reacts to everything that happens." I know that the freedom that we have is due in large part to our leaders from long ago who took a risk, because they believed in what they were fighting for. I am glad that even today, when our country was attacked, our leaders did not sit back and say, "Well, We will wait and see what happens next." They took the fight to the enemy, even on foreign land.... Those 2500 soldiers that have died in Iraq, will not have died in vain. They fought to make the world a safer and better place, and to protect the freedoms that I have, which enable me to live in the greatest country in the world.
Happy Birthday America! Thank you God for the blessing of this great land, and for the courage of leaders and our military, who give of themselves so that we might have freedom in this land.
By the way, I am on my way to Oregon. I will spend about 4 days at the Coast, by myself... which I am looking forward too... Then 5 days with my parents and sister. Again, I am looking forward to that as well. This is a good time for me to really dig into some things personally, and to begin looking forward to my return to the pulpit this fall. Thanks to all of you who have prayed for me. I am getting better and stronger.
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