Saving America

Sunday evening I had the opportunity to view the premiere of “Saving Grace.”  It was a very inspiring story based on an actual event that even to the most hardened viewer would have welted tears to their eyes.  It was a story of passion, brotherly love, acceptance of life’s misfortunes, compassion, forgiveness and most importantly the power of God’s grace.

If you recall back in October 2006 we turned on our televisions to a breaking story of a local citizen who turned his weapons on an Amish School killing 5 female students and injuring several others.  Without going deep into detail to preserve the dignity of those left in his wake the events that unfolded following the incident are a work of divine faith.  Watching the elders of the Amish community visit the shooter’s wife and father, as he was also a casualty, and their offer of forgiveness, and hand of friendship and help in the wake of dealing with the death of five daughters simply because it was the right and Godly thing to do.  It is amazing to see such strong faith when for most it is a time we often cast faith aside as a convenience for our anger and hate.  It was a story of two comparisons of blind faith versus self-indulgence and pity.   It reminds me of another time.  It was a time of 237 years or so ago when another group of individuals shared the same solid unwavering faith as those of the Amish community.  These were our founding fathers.  They left the control of a repressive King, traveled at the peril of the mighty ocean simply to have a life free of repression, government control and to worship freely their provider our God.  It was that faith that has carried this nation to today.

A mighty faith displayed by a man called upon to lead a nation out of tyranny and his soldiers, feet barren of shoes, bloodied and wrapped in leather.  Without wavering, their faith and their perseverance on the prize that they so wanted to prevail.  Each evening, nursing those bloody feet, spending hours in prayer and meditation thanking their Maker for the miles they traveled that day.  It was that special covenant with God that he saw the faithfulness of his children, the obedience of their reserve and through them he proclaimed our land a special place for mankind.

Two and almost a half century later our nation stands as the power of this global world.  Armies fear us, citizens endear us simply because of the bounty of God’s gifts he has bestowed on us.  All of what we have, what we can become, and what we can share with others is simply because our founding fathers placed him at the masthead of our constitution and government.  I have been blessed.

Unlike most, I have had the opportunity to live around an Amish community.  I have also lived within a community that has the same endearing faith of that Amish community near Lancaster, Pennsylvania on that horrible day in 2006.  Like them, the Amish community near my home faced a similar fate.  Like them, the Amish also display an unwavering commitment to their faith and to our God.  It was their moment of test of faith that provided a new commitment of the communities around them that no matter how dim, or how bleak, God walks with us and will show us the way.  Like both Amish communities and the war our founding fathers fought, we are now faced with our own test of faith.  It is up to us to choose the status quo or convert back to the foundation that was built by our founders and the God they praised.  God is there walking beside us and leaves his footprints for us to follow.  We only have to look and reach out for His hand and repent of our stray.  God will lead us back into His stead, protecting us with His mighty hands.

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