Hello God. It's me, Mara

You know, Lord, Independence Day is the birthday of the United States of America, celebrated on the Fourth of July each year. It’s the anniversary of the day on which the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. In 1941, Congress declared July 4 a legal public holiday.

Farmer’s Almanacs are interesting. One issue from long ago stated: “Happy Birthday, Uncle Sam! Nature shoots off Roman candles, fine for shorts and sandals, Golfers vamoose from Dr. Zeus. Your garden looks like Eden, if keep up with your weedin’.”

Henry Ward Beecher wrote: “The heavens and the earth alike speak of God and the great natural world is but another Bible, which clasps and binds the written one; for nature and grace are one — grace, the heart of the flower, and nature, its surrounding petals.”

Lord, we thank you for America. Our forefathers’ prayers made our nation a great nation; but lack of prayers and lack of godliness cause today’s troubles.

Let there be prayers and great parades this Fourth of July; let hymns combine with patriotic songs; and let there be leaders for our future days with heroes of the past amid the throngs. Lord, let reverent silence punctuate the noise and may we remember that it is you who is to be praised in America.

Let citizenship be balanced, that godly men who gave their lives be not betrayed by our dull indifferent ways. Let our joyfulness, not our irresponsibility, be a mark that we are indeed free, and that you, oh Lord, would find us worth our liberty.

Oh, that we could equate freedom in America to the spiritual freedom to which the writer refers in Galatians 5:1: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.”

Love, Mara