Yes! There is Good News! 7.8.2016

I know I mention this in hind-sight, but I do hope everyone had an insightful July 4. Leading up to this day, just last Monday, I began to think about the thousands of men and women who shed their blood on the battlefield of the American Revolution some 240 years ago.

We, today, get caught up in all the celebrations and can forget that this day is a memorial of what our forefathers accomplished in winning freedom from tyranny of the king of England.

Oh, it is a day to celebrate all right - parades, picnics, cookouts, and of course the day’s end fireworks celebration. The victory, of the somewhat rag-tag colonists over the world’s best equipped fight force, set in motion one of the greatest political experiments on this planet.

Our nation became a worldwide symbol of freedom and we, today, still stand in the afterglow that made this nation great.

I do not believe this to be a circumstantial coincidence that somehow just fell into the “laps” of men like John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, etc. I believe (as they did) that the hand of God was involved. Excuse me while I quote from the book “The Thousand Year Leap” by W. Cleon Skousen, “ ... they (the framers of the Constitution) declared that the formation and the adoption of our new system of federal government represented a political achievement unprecedented in human history. They looked upon it, more over, as an event that was actually ‘influenced, guided and governed’ by the hand of God.” In my words, “It was a blessing of extreme importance.”

Are you with me on this? What happened 240 years ago was indeed “Good News.”

But you, like I, have seen the sometimes gradual, sometimes precipitous slide this nation has taken. We have fallen away from these freedoms that were won for us.

So as I pondered these freedoms through the shedding of blood, my mind swung around to another event that took place almost 2000 years ago, to grant all men freedoms that will never fade, never grow old and can never be taken away. These freedoms were also won by the shedding of blood, not on a physical battlefield, but on a spiritual one. They were won by the Son of God as he hung on a cross, Jesus Christ came to Earth to set men free. He came to redeem us from our sins, He came and died to set us at liberty.

More on this next time.