Happy Birthday, America!
Yesterday marked our nation’s 247th birthday. We are so blessed to live in this land. It remains the land of hope and opportunity unparalleled in the world. Have we always gotten everything right? No. But generation after generation we strive to do better. Be better. I believe because that is a tenet of Christian faith. To be better tomorrow than we were yesterday. The LORD said through the prophet Isaiah, “Wash yourselves and be clean! Get your sins out of my sight. Give up your evil ways. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows” (Isaiah 1:16-17). That is our goal. John Newton, the writer of the hymn Amazing Grace put it this way, “I am not the man I ought to be, I am not the man I wish to be, and I am not the man I hope to be, but by the grace of God, I am not the man I used to be.” We fall down. We make mistakes. We learn from them and depend on God’s grace as we move forward.
Did you know inscribed on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia are the words, “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.” That is Leviticus 25:10 in the King James version. After the Revolutionary War, abolitionists seeking to end slavery in America were also inspired by the bell’s message.
Faith is such an important part of the American story. April 30, 1789, President George Washington who added, “So help me God,” to the swearing in ceremony said in his first inaugural address, “…it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect…”
Our second President John Adams said, “The highest story of the American Revolution is this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”
Local boy (West Hartford, CT) Noah Webster (of the Webster’s Dictionary fame) said in 1833, “The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and His Apostles…This is genuine Christianity and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.”
Our seventh President Andrew Jackson said on May 29, 1845, “The Bible is the Rock on which this Republic rests.”
Newly elected president of the United States Zachary Taylor refused inauguration on Sunday March 4, out of respect for the Lord’s Day. He is inaugurated on March 5, 1849.
April 30, 1863 – President Abraham Lincoln said, “…nations are only blessed whose God is the Lord…”
On February 15, 1950 President Harry S. Truman said, “The fundamental
basis of this nation’s law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental
basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teaching we get from Exodus and St.
Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these
days. If we don’t have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally
end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in the right for
anybody except the state.”
This may or may not be a “Christian Nation,” but we cannot deny our
Judeo-Christian foundation. We are certainly not a Buddhist nation. Nor a Hindu
or Islamic one. Patrick Henry (Five-time Governor of Virginia) once said, “It
cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was
founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been
afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”
Yes, we are blessed to call this country our home and may we continue
to “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.”
Happy birthday, America!
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Remember you can email praises and petitions to southchurchprayer@gmail.com. I lift them up every Wednesday at 4:00 pm on Facebook Live.
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