Our Nation Starts With Us

My dad was a retired Air Force serviceman. He was also a retired Federal Civil Service employee. My dad became disabled from defending this land for you and for me. And with all that, my dad used to say that with all her problems, America is the greatest country on earth.

Let’s talk about …..

1. AMERICA’S GREATNESS

America has greatness in her beauty. From the tree covered hills in Main, to the clear streams running through meadows in Kentucky, to the vast desert vistas in Arizona, on to the stunningly beautiful coast of California, America simply has it all. There is no other place on earth that has such a diversity of beauty within its borders.

But that is not what makes America great.

America has greatness in the abundance she offers. I have been to many other countries, as some of you have, and I have seen first-hand that even the poor in America have more than most people in some other countries. We offer the ability to have a fine home, several cars, toys of every kind and nature, and we offer all of it on the installment plan so you don’t have to save any money to have any item.

But that is not what makes America great.

America has greatness in her freedoms and liberties. It used to be that everyone respected the rights of others, even if they disagreed with our thoughts. Today, however, society has very little tolerance for anyone else, and even less ability to be civil with others who disagree. Common sense just isn’t that common in America anymore.

Today, the in-thing to do is show you are an “UN” person. In other words, the trendy thing is to be unpatriotic; unforgiving; and even un-American and unchristian at times. And we do all this, believing it is our right to do so and we are justified. The “UN” thing is rapidly destroying the very fabric of our wonderful nation.

There are people in America today that are actually undermining the integrity of our country because they are not motivated by principle but rather by selfishness. They want notoriety, fortune, or power, and they don’t really care how they get it. They try to revise history to say that our forefathers felt the same way. But that is a lie.

Those brave men who signed the Declaration of Independence had far more to lose than they ever stood to gain. As we have discussed before, most of them were wealthy and influential, but they willingly put all that on the line for this nation, because they knew there was something far more important that the materialistic. They knew that true freedom and the ideas freedom was based on were far more important to this nation.

These men paid the price for our freedoms because almost all of them lost everything they had for their principles. I cannot help but wonder just how many of us today are that committed to the principles we claim in our lives. By singing the Declaration of Independence, they were committing an act of treason against the British Empire. The penalty for such was death, yet they signed anyway.

John Hancock singed twice as large as anyone else, and he explained it by saying, “Now His majesty can read my name without his spectacles.” Stephen Hopkins was a very old man, and he signed with a shaky signature. He said his hand trembled, but his heart did not. These men paid the price for what we enjoy today. They lost everything they had and died penniless and broken. The next time you see old Glory waving in the breeze, take a good long look. The red stripes on our flag were painted by the blood that many shed for our freedoms.

This is what makes America so great.

And the next time you see somebody burning a flag in demonstration, understand that this is not freedom of speech. This is an act of treason that deserves to be punished as such. One should never carelessly dishonor the price others paid for their freedom to be ignorant.

Now, let’s talk about …

2. AMERICA’S GOD

Just as some people want to rewrite history to make it look like our forefathers didn’t care about God, they also want to take Jesus out of our society today. They conjure up all kinds of stories to make you think it didn’t happen the way it did – even though the proof is against them! Just because I want something and say something, does not mean it is true. There is an old political saying that says: “Tell a lie often enough and loud enough and it will soon be believed.”

People should just accept the past. Most people settled their country in times past because they went there looking for riches. People settled America because they went there looking for God.