I had an odd but profound experience today. I was flipping through my US passport, and to be honest I have never really took the time to look through the pages of the passport. Yet for some reason I felt compelled to examine the little booklet a little more closely as I picked it up, admiring the beautifully printed and designed pages. Each page had a quote on the top, and as I was reading each quote I began to be more inspired and fell in love once again with America, because I saw the fingerprints of god written in our documents. I felt as if I was going back in time and revisiting history and the building of the foundations of our country—and that’s when it became so so clear to me: our nation was founded upon Christ!! When our fathers drafted the constitution, they had made God, and essentially the laws of this nation, upon the values and the beliefs of the bible! Truly, jesus was the CORNERSTONE, the center, the foundation, in which everything else was built—and my heart melted.
As I held my passport in my hand and looked at the front cover which says, “United States of America” and I felt as if I was living in a surreal moment. For a split second, I could not believe that I was actually living in America. The phrase “land of the free” and “in god we trust” was just ringing in my ears... and I began to be overwhelmed with thankfulness. Wow, I am blessed, I am blessed, I am blessed, I am so so blessed! I couldn’t fully grasp the reality of me living in America, because I feel like for me to be living in such a privileged and prosperous nation is also so surreal—you have no idea how blessed you and I are.
Can you imagine??
Do you know many people die a day from starvation simply because they do not have the financial means to acquire food? To think that there are people who are literally starving at an unbearable and inhumane rate until their stomach eats themselves up from the inside out, until their bones fall apart, and until they feel so weak that they can no longer have enough calories to even take another breath of oxygen just completely wrecks me from the inside. If you think that you cannot go one day without food, and if you cannot have the energy to function if you do not eat for a couple of days, can you imagine what it is like for a child who can only have 200 calories a day? How can one even sanely survive without such a basic necessity as food?
Can you imagine??
Imagine a world without technology and internet. In the first world countries, our whole lives depend on technology—what would it be like without phones? Computers? Or even electricity? Goodness, we would not be able to last a week! Or even imagine what it would be like without the opportunity to learn, to go to school, to get a college education? Even as im writing this, im stirred to remember how absolutely priviledged I am to have the rare opportunity to study at a university—wow.
And what about the fresh, nutritious, delicious food that we eat, the clean and refreshing water that we drink, and the nice homes that we live in? there are soo many people in this world that don’t even have homes, but live in slums, have no access to clean water, and don’t have the luxury of eating fresh food. To think that there is extreme wealth and extreme poverty co-existing together in the same planet makes me think that we are actually living in worlds apart. So apart are we first world countries from third world countries and so great is the dichotomy that most times we do not even care about the sufferings of others—they literally don’t exist.
And for me, the greatest privilege of all, the thing that I am most thankful for, is that I am living in the land of the free—that I can have the right to practice religion freely, that I can have acess to a wealth of resources on the internet as well as novels on Christian literature, that I can go to church and pray freely and publicly. Wow! Let me never take my freedom for granted, or even the ability to own a bible for granted lord!
Sorry...I did not intend to go off a bit tangent and pour out my thoughts regarding America and what our country was founded upon. I guess, my point is...i feel like god is opening my eyes to see truly that HE is the one who blessed us, because we were founded on HIM. Our nation was able to stand because the temple of the constitution was built upon the solid Rock, Jesus Christ, in whom He is the only one who can hold all things together. He was truly our cornerstone, the focus of our country and thus we who trusted in Him and built our lives upon Him will never be disappointed or put to shame. Seeing who we were before and how far weve gone away from Him reallybreaks my heart. Lord have mercy on this nation... bring is back to you lord, bring us back.
O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their lov'd homes and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
- last stanza from Star Spangled Banner
