The picture above comes from one of my favorite Fourth of July’s—a week spent almost at the tree line in Montana. In the summer of 2001, our family traveled over 7000 miles across the country from Montana to Massachusetts and saw many of our country’s historical sites. I’m currently editing a narrative entitled Dream Summer I wrote about that summer and am reliving many of our adventures. Every Fourth I think about those days and how blessed I felt to have had the privilege of seeing our country in that way, especially in light of the impending national tragedy which unfolded just days after return. Here’s an excerpt from the last chapter of Dream Summer:
Wherever we’ve been, her (America’s) people have blessed us. I hope my children have some understanding of what it means to be an American citizen and how many have laid down their lives so that we might have ours. For the heroes who include the man who helped begin our country’s freedom trail one dark night in April of 1775 to twenty-first century firefighters in a cataclysmic disaster, we give thanks. They have made our “Dream Summer” and the telling of it possible. For the heroes that are yet to be, we pray a firm resolve and the scripture from Ecclesiastes 9, that God would grant them a “Wisdom which is better than weapons of war.” And from the mountains of Montana, to the prairies of South Dakota, to the rocky shoreline of Massachusetts, to our own sweet home in the South, we pray indeed that God would bless America.
Happy Fourth!