"Gratitude................................."

About twenty-five years ago, our little congregation opted to start its own school, utilizing in the beginning a well-known program wherein the kids, with guidance, simply studied their way through various subject levels, the books, themselves, being the prime source of instruction. We worked with a volunteer staff, made do with what we had, and had an enrollment of somewhere around sixty students. Today attendance is closer to two hundred, teachers are on salary, either holding a degree or moving toward one, the operation maintained out of it own facility, complete with a large gymnasium and a winning basketball team. Yesterday McKenna and Noah, my two youngest grandchildren, were part of a presentation by the Elementary grades which recognized and gave honor to grandparents who had served this country through military service, a couple of folk dating back to WWII. I was brushing tears from my eyes for nearly the whole hour we were there… In studying the history of this nation, it’s not that I believe it to gave been birthed and founded upon any real representation of Christianity. Men have always been men. The Church has been a mixture of humanity and the Holy Ghost all along. America’s identity, therefore, has not been forged out of some divine blessing, but more like out of divine grace, divine patience, and His willingness to walk with us in spite of our mess. My bond with her flag, then, isn’t some patriotic attachment to principles that too often are abused by people with no understanding that such terms hold little significance if not created out of heartfelt self-sacrifice. I salute, not just stars and stripes, but the lives of those ones who gave themselves, in one way or another, for that which the banner is said to serve. My relationship with it is much like the one I embrace with the standard of my faith displayed on the other side of the sanctuary. Both deeply connect with me, the latter just flown, within, higher up than the first……