The Weekly Perspective
by Burke Shade, Associate Pastor
This past Thursday, one way or another, you celebrated the birth of our nation. Either you blew off fireworks or took the day off and watched patriotic movies and cooked out with the family and friends, or you did nothing and tried not to notice.
Celebrating on July 4 is often a conflicting exercise for Christians. Why? Because while we want to celebrate what our nation has done in the past and is today, we realize that is a mixed blessing. We are one of the freer nations in the world and have many rights, and it seems like the rest of the world is beating down our doors to get here one way or another. But on the other hand, which of the Ten Commandments do we not violate in spades! We worship others gods, we don’t acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord, we murder our babies and throw those who protest into jail, we protect and encourage and support with tax dollars every perversion from fornication to adultery to homosexuality to trying to change whether we are male and female. On top of that, we steal and lie and bear false witness and covet what everyone else has. And we aren’t a happy people!
How then shall we think about this celebration of our beginning? By giving thanks to God for the good we’ve done, and also by repenting of the evils we have pressed in the past and are doing so now. By giving faithful witness to King Jesus, that he rules the world and will bring all wrongs to right. And finally, by remembering that God himself has ordained “nations” to exist, and uses them to advance his kingdom: “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him…” Acts 17.26-27a