Independence Day is coming up, when we celebrate our freedom. But, what is freedom? We can’t see it; we see only the results of it. We can’t hold it in our hands yet it is bought at a great price. It seems that so many things that are vital to life and happiness are invisible but as necessary as the air we breathe.
I thought about our country, America, and the wonderful freedom we have. Our freedom didn’t come from a benevolent government but from a wise and loving God. Freedom was pretty important to our Founders. To the King of England, those colonists who dared defy him were traitors and treason was punishable by death. But to us, looking back at their courage and wisdom, they were patriots.
Then I thought of the word “courage”. Courage isn’t the lack of fear. It’s doing what we believe to be right even though we are shaking in our boots. America has been blessed with courageous people from its very beginnings–those who have faced death in many wars, the politicians who, although ridiculed and out-numbered, have nonetheless stood firmly on their convictions, moms and dads who put their children before their own comforts, young people who resist peer pressure and choose to go with the values they’ve been taught. Going to work every day so that our children have food, clothing, and shelter takes courage too.
Courage and freedom are intertwined with another invisible but vital force: love. We love our country. We love our families, our freedom and our God. Because we do, we have courage, the courage to keep going, to continue asking God for guidance, even to face each day with hope and joy and to begin and end our day with gratitude for all those invisible things from the hand of God.
Katherine Lee Bates said it well in a great patriotic song, “America, the Beautiful”. O beautiful for pilgrim feet Whose stern impassioned stress,
A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness. America, America, God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law.
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