There's a picture in my memory of a Fourth of July some seventeen years ago. My mom snapped it. I suspect it's somewhere in a box of treasured photos that I've yet to place in an album.
Our Hayden was around eighteen months old. In the picture he's barefoot in the bed of my dad's truck with some cousins eating watermelon. He has on a striped red and white t-shirt with s blue logo. His wavy hair still damp, he's sporting a swim diaper because we'd waded in the creek behind my parent's house.
The picture encompasses so much of what I think about when I consider things I love about the Fourth of July. It's a day that's set apart to spend time with family; a day that usually involves a barbecue, and when the stars come out, fireworks.
That's a pretty myopic view in light of the sacrifice generations of men have made in order for us to enjoy the freedoms and comforts we have in the country we live in today.
We remember the men who have fought that we might prosper and be free. Not only have women and men put their lives on the line for the people who live in this great country, but our military (including hundreds of thousands whose address is now a graveside) selflessly served that those in foreign places might also gain.
We salute those men as we sing in chorus God Bless America and gratitude bubbles up within us.
Our Stars and Stripes waves on highway sides and in yards on our streets and we feel pride. Sometimes too much...As if our ingenuity, goodness and sacrifice were all that made this country great.
America goes much deeper than wars we have waged or the presidents we elect. It runs deeper than red, white and blue. And thank goodness.
Our ideals aren't what they were when this nation was formed. Though formed as a nation "under God", we've, as a country, "forsaken the love we had at first". Some call that progress. Others of us are complacent in America's Godless trajectory and our lampstand is losing its glow.
Pride, ill-conceived progress and division have become our trademark.
Neither at our nation's beginning nor in its current condition should our celebration be about how great America is.
This day we're celebrating is about the greatness of the Father of our nation. It's our gratitude for how he guides us. It's about the opportunity we've been afforded, through America's birth and growing pains, to freely share the eternal wealth and good news we have in Christ.
It shouldn't be as much about what we love ABOUT our country as it is how much love we have FOR our country, both those in it and those who live outside its bounds.
Those of us whose God is the Lord have the privilege and responsibility to freely live, but more importantly to freely love.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.’
Matthew 22:38-39
We've the legacy of a sea of good fighting men and the single greatest man. Following after such a love is the way to make America great again.