The Fourth of July
(07-04-2001)

Have you ever considered the irony of the fact that in our annual celebration of independence, we depend on the manufacturing strength of Red China to supply our pyrotechnic displays? We commemorate the deeds of our forefathers with communist bottle rockets. I crack a smile as a write, but the principle does strike a nerve.

America is a good country in a civil sense. She can be a great county again if she returns to her roots. Of foremost importance is a general return to Biblical faith and morals. George Washington wisely asked in his farewell address, "Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue?" In a similar strain is the less familiar fourth stanza from Francis Scott Key's "The Star Spangled Banner":

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner forever shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

In this year of our Lord two thousand and one, and of the independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-fifth, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, let us mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to the advancement of God's kingdom and the spread of liberty, righteousness, justice, and peace. To God be the glory forever. Amen.