Today, Americans celebrate
Independence Day … in a variety of ways. Many have taken extra time off from work and
are traveling; some are taking a special opportunity to visit family; and
others just stay home. There is a lot of
BBQs going on all across the country; there are fireworks, parades and all
kinds of celebrations which have become traditions in the United States of
America. We celebrate this holiday
because of what happened 240-years old in 1776.
We celebrate the actions of people we only know about because of our
history books. We celebrate that these
people had the gumption or gall or courage to break the existing hold of Europe
on these wilderness colonies that had struggled to survive and were being
choked by rules and unfair burdens by the king of England.
They were pretty
specific in the Declaration of
Independence. If you read through
the document [which I encourage you to do] you find oppression, abuse, removal
of rights, false justice and punishment. You find a precisely stated set of charges
against the king and their justification for separation from the rule of a
king. Their charges are that the king is
not fulfilling his responsibility to be a protector of the people; and worse …
that he is abusing his distant subjects.
Their declaration was to break free of the strangle hold of a tyrant.
Interestingly, we
celebrate the day of declaration – not the day it was actually achieved. I guess if they had lost their struggle we
would not be celebrating at all … and this not be a holiday. We would now be subjects of the queen.
But, we celebrate the
ideal of the prize that was worth everything to the men that would sign the
document; something worth risking wealth and even life to gain.
Listen, again, to the
first sentence in the Declaration of
Independence – it is a whopper. It
is long, and I imagine that it would make an English teacher wince. It reads: “When
in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the
powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature
and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the
separation.” It sets the stage for
the rest of the document, basically saying when things are bad enough people
have to take action and force a separation.
The second sentence of
the Declaration of Independence
reads: “We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable [unchangeable] Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.”
Now, 240-years later, we
still enjoy the freedom that the Declaration
of Independence called for on behalf of the colonies and future citizens:
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I don’t know about you,
but I’m so grateful that God had me enter this world in the USA. There are a lot of less comfortable places in
this world where there is little or no freedom. Places where life, liberty, and pursuit of
happiness are a pipe dream. For some on
this planet the biggest goal is to have life … with little hope for much else.
But listen: The struggle
for independence is still going on today. In our nation, the battle over religious freedom is growing; and I
would suggest that if we don’t join the battle, we will continue to see our
rights and freedoms redefined and denied.
Our nation’s founders
obviously were much more open to the leading of God than many of our
politicians and judges today. The battle
over our spiritual freedom continues
as well. We all struggle over right and
wrong every day. We decide over loving
ourselves and loving our neighbor, and we probably don’t win as many battles as
we could. In fact, I fear that we don’t
struggle or battle at all. We just
choose self and ignore others … and let sin and personal desire guide our
selfish choices.
God offers us the help
we need, it is not always as easy to find as we want. It takes real effort and control to listen to
the Spirit. It takes even more to follow
the Spirit’s leading.
Rev. Dr.
Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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