Dear Friends,
At the end of the week, our nation celebrates 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. Two-hundred-and-fifty years of striving, growing, taking chances, making mistakes, being heroic, believing in God’s guiding Presence, questioning faith:
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw…
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness and every gain divine.
Not all of us have worked to gain freedom for everyone or welcome for all who came to settle in our land. The mean-spirited among us ripped security and hope from Native Americans, immigrants and former slaves. But the mean-spirited did not gain the day or the future. Among us have been and are the clear-headed and the warm-hearted, the compassionate and those who share the bounty of life – these are Americans
who more than self their country loved
and mercy more than life.
Take time this week, and even next weekend, to pray for our homeland, that we honor and use for good the talents, dreams and aspirations of all Americans. Talk with others about the nobleness of this venture.
From the inspired words of Katherine Lee Bates, who wrote “America the Beautiful" in 1895, to Amanda Gorman, who read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021, Americans have been inspired to become the best we can be. “Our nation isn’t broken,” Amanda Gorman tells us. “It is only unfinished.”
Let’s continue the work of finishing it together. Happy 250th 4th.
No comments:
Post a Comment