Happy Birthday America!

I find that the recent events in my life have taken away from my anticipation of the Independence Day preparations. I wasn't able to read the story of the Declaration of Independence to the kids, or talk about what it means to live in our beautiful country very much leading up to this day. I hate that. There is not a day goes by that I am not thankful to live in this amazing country. And I believe that it is amazing because it once had an amazing God. I say that not because He is no longer amazing, but because so many no longer claim Him as theirs.

I was on a news channel last night and thought it was entertaining when the man with the microphone went up to random people on the beach to ask them some simple questions about America. Let's see if you could answer any of these correctly:

1. Who did we fight in WW2?
2. Which country attacked Pearl Harbor?
3. Who won the Cold War?
4. Who did we fight in the Vietnam War?
5. Name a Founding Father?
6. What did Benjamin Franklin do for our country? (I just had to say I am sure you all would be better at answering than one young lady who looked questioningly into the camera and said "Wasn't he our 100th president?")
7. Name a Founding Father (sadly, more than one answered "what's a Founding Father?")
8. Why do we celebrate the 4th of July (thankfully, there were a few among the crowd that mentioned something about our independence)
9. Who did we declare independence from?

Thankfully, most of my children know the answers to these questions and I do my best to raise them with some sense of understanding of the price of this freedom. As entertaining as it is to see people in their bathing suits answer the question "South Korea" to the question "Who did we fight in the Vietnam war?", it is also very sad to me.

I am not going to get very deep in this 4th of July post, if you want deep, you can check this out...Thoughts from 2015 but I am going to say, as I do most years that we have got to stop taking things for granted. And, the reason we are great (or have been great since some would beg to differ in our current state), is because God is in control of this nation. He was the first focus of our founding fathers (no, Abraham Lincoln was NOT a founding father). As He becomes less and less a part of our country's culture, we see more and more a people who see this day as just another day off of work where we can hang out at the beach and grill a few burgers. (Check out Google's banner for this Independence Day)

Happy Birthday America...may we have many many more!