This week has been a fun one for me. I love the fourth of July. I love our country. From Alaska to the tip of Florida, I believe it is the most beautiful place on earth to live...in many, many ways.
Being blessed to have been born here, thrive here, grow old here; there is nothing else like it on this planet. It is dear to my heart. I am forever awed by the Sovereign grace that has brought us thus far. We could have lost this republic. It has cost us dearly, but it has prevailed, freedom has prevailed. God has surely protected us.
This week, July 9th, to be exact, another country was born...Southern Sudan. That country is not as developed as we are. It's people have suffered much and have survived through many, many years of brutal civil war. Yesterday they celebrated their new country with flags newly designed and flying high, a soccer game with Kenya and visiting dignitaries. Jubilant citizens everywhere.
Just last month, however, there was intense fighting on their border, dozens of civilians were killed and 60,000 displaced. Two churches that had been built since their citizens voted for freedom, were burned, destroyed. The villages around them filled with soldiers from the north.
It is not a simple freedom. There is vast oil production in the south...there is hostile hatred from many enemies that would want to thwart their joy. Yet..they still celebrate. Hope is high.
Here in our America the beautiful, we picnic and shoot off fireworks and decorate in our red, white and blue. It's a festive, fun and familiar event. Let us never forget that indeed, "Freedom is not free" and in our joy not to forget the new born babe of a country that despite it's peril still celebrates with as much, if not more, gusto than we do.
Any battle, any conflict could have tipped our freedom's scales, but it did not. We, we blessed and
complex citizens, different in so many ways, united by a portion of land that touches two oceans and carries the weight of many mountains, spread dry with dramatic deserts, touched gently by forests and valleys, slapped alert by boisterous cities...We have so much just to behold, Let us bow our heads for a new idea of freedom in a far off place, 100,000 of their people enslaved to the north and an enemy that wants danger to be their bedfellow. Let us be thankful first for our nation. Then let us ask for Southern Sudan to be given a chance to grow as we have...give them peace. May they sing," Southern Sudan, the Beautiful" someday!
