What is the 4th of July?

What is the 4th of July? It’s not fireworks and hotdogs, or a day off work, it’s the celebration of the birth of our nation, the independence our founding fathers fought for so that we could enjoy freedom. Our National Anthem sings of bombs bursting in air, but those weren’t fireworks of celebration, they were literal bombs that killed many…yes, liberty comes at a great cost; freedom is not pretty and it certainly is NOT free.

John F. Kennedy said “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again.” Another quote by Ronald Reagan, “I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.”

The freedom of our nation has never been more precarious, but no matter what the state of our country, the truth is we MUST trust that God still has a plan. We can’t sit in front of the TV, listening to the endless fear-spewing, fretting over who’s deciding this and who’s destroying that. He knew us before we were born and knows the number of hairs on our head…that means He’s deliberate and He’s all knowing. If we’ve done our part…if we’ve submitted our lives to Christ and done our best to do the Book, we know how the story ends and we’ll spend our eternity with Him. THAT is worth celebrating!