To all of my USA readers, Happy Independence Day! If you’ve been following the news – news from a conservative perspective – you’ll know that there were several stories about foreign tourists discovering and really enjoying things we regularly take for granted, like hot dogs, air conditioning, or Buc-ee’s. It’s been highlighting a fact we often take for granted.
We have it really, REALLY good in America. People gripe and groan about what a horrible, racist, facist, misogynist, whatever-ist country this is.
And yet they’re still living here. They’re still enjoying American prosperity, freedom, and autonomy. They’ll moan about our police, but no one will complain about a safe street. They’ll moan about Islamaphobia, but no American woman wants to live under Sharia law. They’ll moan about capitalism but I bet none of them would like to experience life under Stalin or Castro.
This Independence Day, I am thankful for my country. For everything I love about my country. Sure, I’ve got things I don’t like about it too. But one has to keep things in perspective and be grateful for the blessings. And here in America, we have WAY more blessings as compared to the rest of the world.
I’m thankful for mountains and beautiful green plains, for honking big oak trees and Pacific beaches. For manatees and deer. For thunderstorms rolling in over fields and thick pine forests. For the spirit of grit and determination that led insanely courageous people to explore all over this vast great country and settle it. For the moral foundation and dedication to the idea of an orderly universe that led this country to build and discover like no country has before, essentially bringing about the Industrial Revolution and then the modern era.
America invented the automobile, the electric lightbulb, moving pictures, cotton gin, animation, microchips, skyscrapers, the internet. Steamboats, nuclear power, airplanes, hamburgers, AR-15s. Assembly lines, the telephone, transitors, soda, TV. There are so many luxuries we’re just used to being surrounded by — and they were invented by our countrymen, our forefathers. Isn’t that something to be proud of?
I’m so thankful for firework shows and old back roads and the abundance of churches, Google and 80s headbangers and Christian rock. I get to vote, to drive a car, to have a job and earn wages. I can enjoy Chick-fil-a, Dutch Bros, or Costco ready meals whenever. If I wanted, I could get a college degree, or I could learn a trade, or teach myself with YouTube — education is so readily available in this country it’s incredible.
Hot dogs are amazing and nights at baseball games are nostalgic memories from my childhood. Barbeques and Blue Bunny drumsticks are something you ain’t gonna find anywhere else. The spirit of perseverance and hard work and a chance at building a life, family, and home for yourself is so uniquely American, and something to embrace wholeheartedly.
Here in America, we have so many blessings. Instead of focusing on what we don’t like about this country all the time, let’s remember to thank God too.
1 Thessalonians 5:18 NIV Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
We have an awful lot to be thankful for on this Independence Day. I walked into a Target recently, and what was front and center this year? Americana. The Pride stuff had been relegated to a cart in the back. Now, the Pride stuff shouldn’t be there at all. But you know what, I’ll just be glad that the feelings of the American people made themselves known and some people realized it was hurting profits to be shoving their agenda down our throats.
Evil will always be evil, and this world isn’t going to be getting any better until Jesus returns. But, to riff off a C.S. Lewis quote, God provides many pleasant inns along the road to our true home.
We’ve been extremely blessed. Now let’s turn around and bless others with that. I don’t mean that America ought to be some sort of world policeman and spreader of democracy. That’s terrible governmental policy, and we are a republic, not a democracy. I mean that the individual people should live lives that glorify God and bless others. That’s all any Christian is called to do. The individual American should serve his God, his family, his community, and his country. In that order. That’s how we enact change to fix the things we don’t like about this country. From the bottom up.
Be where God has placed you. Live, as Jim Elliot said, to the hilt. Love, and serve, and work hard as one working for God and not for men.
And don’t forget the incredible grace we have been shown. The incredible grace it is that you were born in this country, enjoying the luxuries you do.
God bless America, my home sweet home.
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