What Are You Doing to Maintain our Freedoms?
By Genevieve Schmitt
The word freedom was formally introduced to our great land here in America in the Declaration of Independence signed on July 4, 1776. This is why we celebrate the fourth of July. It marks the signing of this document that officially separated the 13 American colonies from the oppressive monarch of Great Britain.
I encourage you to pull up the text of this historical document on your computer or your cell phone and read it the next time you’re sitting down for lunch. It’s not very long. You’ll be re-enlightened to the freedoms our founding fathers secured for us 247 years ago. The part I find fascinating is the writers outlined for all the world to see the grievances they had against the King of Great Britain. One by one they list the tyrannical control he exerted over the growing nation of America. Many of these injustices start out with “He has refused…” “He has forbidden…” “He has dissolved…”
Here are a few that caught my attention with original language intact:
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
• For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury.
• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies.
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.
• He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.
Do you see what I see? Are your eyes, heart, and mind open enough to absorb the message here? I pray right now that the scales over your eyes be removed so you truly see what is to be seen and you truly know what is to be known here.
With so many of our hard-fought freedoms hanging in the balance today, as a citizen of the United States of America, I implore you to do your God-given duty and read the Declaration of Independence to see what was secured for you to live the life you do in America. Here’s the second paragraph, the part you may be familiar with: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
The word “Creator,” by the way, is referring to God. Not some woo-woo universal god deity, but the Almighty Yehovah God in Heaven, who knit you together in your mother’s womb, and who gave us His son, Jesus Christ, Who, by the shedding of His blood on the cross, caused a pivotal moment in history by securing the liberty that’s mentioned here for the soul of each person. (Another word for liberty is freedom.) Look at what the Bible says in James 1:25 about liberty. “But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”
So powerful! Jesus is that perfect law of liberty. Jesus is the one who grants freedom to a human soul. Freedom from sin. Freedom from the oppressiveness of this world. But as you see, we must do and act, not just hear, when we’re granted that inalienable right of liberty from above. Continuing in that second paragraph is a key section. It explains our rights; mainly that the government gets its power with our consent, We the People (I bolded for emphasis). Look what is available to us!
“That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
My prayer for the July 4th holiday weekend here in Park County is that we bow our heads and reflect on the significance of what was accomplished for us two and a half centuries ago. I pray that we do our duty as citizens. What is that? Read the Declaration of Independence and let God speak to your heart on what to DO. If not you and me, who? God bless you. God bless America.