Happy Happy-250-Birthday-USA-Saturday, friends!
And happy Saturday to my friends from other countries! I hope you can love and celebrate your country as much as I do mine.
I looked out my front door this morning and saw the flag waving (courtesy of the Downtown Kiwanis Club) with a mixture of profound gratitude and disappointment.
I wish it could be all gratitude, but that’s actually not realistic.
Not because things are worse than they’ve ever been—they’re not—but because the “land that I love” has, from its infancy, always been a mixed bag.
We have been a nation of unprecedented opportunity for some and have denied the most basic of rights to others.
We have been one of the greatest forces for good and peace in the world and have also allowed our self-interests to involve us in conflicts that are questionable at best and downright unjustifiable at worst.
We have championed freedom of speech, lawful assembly, and religious expression—without government entanglements—and have also used government to squelch those freedoms in those with whom we disagree.
We have both cooperated with and vilified those with different views.
We have both held our own accountable and made excuses for them.
We have both humbly acknowledged God’s blessings and arrogantly presumed they are deserved.
In short, we are not now—nor have we ever been—perfect.
Not even close to perfect.
Many of those statements could also be made about another “people” that I love:
The Church.
We’re very often just a hot mess.
But make no mistake, I love my country and my fellow countrymen and pray for my country to be all she can and should be.
And I love my family of faith—all of them around the world—and pray that we will be salt and light in every corner of God’s good earth.
250 years is worth celebrating.
And while I’m sometimes disappointed in who we are, it is never time for despair.
My hymn text today is widely familiar. This particular version in my hymnal is adapted to be sung to the tune of “All Creatures of Our God and King.” (Lasst Uns Erfreuen) rather than the familiar “Doxology” (Old Hundredth).
It is a reminder to me that there will come a day when the United States of America—along with every other geopolitical entity—will be no more.
There will be a new heaven and new earth and those from every tribe and tongue will worship and live in the presence of the One from whom all blessings flow.
Until then, let us strive to make the ways of His kingdom more visible—on earth as it is in the heavens.
No matter what country we currently call home.
Be amazing today, my friend.
