Freedom

Happy Fourth of July!

We do have much to be grateful for as we pause today (and tomorrow for government workers) to reflect on the bold step our founders took 234 years ago.  We know the rest of the story - how a rag-tag army of ill-trained soldiers fought for five years to win an independent nation.  What they could not know, was how would this new nation function.  At first, the newly formed states governed as each saw fit under the loose Articles of Confederation.  Circumstances arising from the nearly autonomous governing of the States led to the Constitution twelve years after the British surrender at Yorktown.  The Constitution recognized a free people, established so by "the Creator" from whom all rights are received.  The Federal government, as enumerated in the Constitution, is only the protector of those rights, being charged to "form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

In the early Twentieth Century, President Franklin Roosevelt discussed and Norman Rockwell painted scenes describing four essential freedoms:  Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Want, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear.

Remember our freedom comes not from man, from government, but from God, the Creator and Sustainer of all things.  He is the Author of our Freedom from Fear, a freedom Cynth and I have struggled at times leading up to this week.  I know it very well may get worse before it is better.  But I know God, who delights in me, and calls me His Beloved, has adopted me so I am a joint heir.  And so I can say with Paul in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me, and the life I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me."

I will not fear.