Land Of Sweet Promise

February 22, 2006

Joel Akin

In every life there is a purpose. In America we were welcomed here by the Native People and though most live with reservations they still represent a part of our culture. Even the British, though some called them the red jackets, yet they also represent a part of our present land. From the Atlantic to the Pacific or from sea to sea we are a people of contrast and a people that represent some of the highest ideals of liberty and justice. America was born on these ideals and her people were born with liberties that many take for granted. Freedom of the press, freedom to bear arms, freedom of religion. These are rights and yet the bill we pay for them is often in blood. And blood is the key which has held every country in time subservient and every person liable to the liberties to which they cling. Liberties are freedoms and yet each freedom is to be cherished and clung to because they are the rights of the present people and yet also the rights of those generations yet to be born. If we charge our generation with the cost of the past then we also charge this generation with gifts for which they paid. And in a sense that is the purpose of 'bills' of rights which are charged to us so that we might pay for the people yet to come. Yet if those who refuse the charges are brought up believing those freedoms are without cost and refuse to pay forward then the future people born will be without conscience or kindness.

 In a way we are like children who have received a great gift. The price has been paid by our father and mother and their parents and those before them. When we are given this price and reflect on it we see that wisdom is carried forward. Knowledge is a gift as well and those who perish do so because they have lost sight of it. It is gifted by faith and from faith our generation walks forward. Not because we are sighted with great insight into what may come. More the matter of fact that we are carried forward by the cherished sight of hope. Hope takes our beginnings, raw as they may be, and strips them down to the barest of gold. And that gold is raw, pulled from the ground, cherished by some yet others wish it refined and polished so that it might become something of even greater value. And those nuggets of truth become even greater in their polishing and testing and proofing until we look at something that is beyond compare.

Yet if these truths are so evident to our sight then why do we as a nation crumble under adversity and faint in the day of trials? The answer is because we cannot see the path that our fathers fought for. Like the old wagon roads that carried across the plains, hills and mountains we forget their foundings and their finish. We forget the toil of the pioneers who straightened out the crooked paths and forged roads where none had been before. We cannot see those roads today for they have been forgotten and buried by time but the legacy they created is still with us today. Studied and founded and bolstered by the issues of our day. We reflect the culture of our time but stand upon the laws and standards that were the issues of yesterday. If we crush our past legacy into forgetfulness then we also crush the past values in a way that is difficult to resurrect. Some might question those values of yesterday saying our parents were naive and young. That our world had little insight into things that were of cosmic unity. But the value of time and the legacy of youth are often lost in the quagmire we call war.

Not all wars are fought in the ghettoes nor are they lost on the streets. Some are carried into the heart and mind of individuals who lose themselves in the values we call faith in God. It is there that we find an equality among the people who have a tradition, if you will, of faith in an almighty God who set us upon a cornerstone that we might be founded upon a Plymouth rock. Now some might laugh and say it is a challenge of words only. But those challenges we face today are the marks of quality upon our gold tomorrow. If we carry only nuggets in our pockets they tend to weigh us down and we forget their tender in the legalities of forged truths.

In the pages of antiquity there might be a verse or a rhyme, a passion or a pledge, a cry or a prayer. Yet today those pages gather dust in some respects because we turn aside from hard paths that we might follow the easy roads forged ahead of us. But there is a new day, each day, a new sun that rises upon the land of destiny and promise. I speak of America and I speak of her future. For I know that God has promised that we shall not die nor face a destiny of darkness. It is said that George Washington had a vision where tragedy befouled this great nation and the Lady of Liberty fell to her knees. Going to ones knees is not a tragedy in itself but is a question of freedoms given or lost. If our sea ports are given to those who turn from the truth then they bring in, with our blessing, their tastes and their concept of freedom. If they are contrary to ours do we turn away and walk aside from the traditions we knew? Are traditions enough? Are we ready to fight a war upon our own land? For if we grant passage to the reprehensible acts of tyranny then we grant passage once again to slavery and freedom. Not based on color or contrast of skin but upon the measure of the heart which beats out the sounds of joy. And we as Americans must take back our land and our freedoms from those who would take it away. We call it right to vote and right to contact those who work their laws under our sway. If we turn aside from that then what right do we have to call ourselves owners of freedom and hope?

This land is ours gifted to us by God and given to us with the premise that we would keep it free for all time and all peoples. If we challenge that edict to place Him at the center of our passages of law then the law with which we carried to the people shall follow us to the grave of history from which America shall not rise. But I have prayed for this great land that we might see the justice and knowledge of having wisdom in our land. For the wisdom of the land is the wisdom of its people. And people listen. For what we bring forth from this time and moment will determine the course laid out before us by God. No man shall prosper except he who sees that the price of freedom is the bill given to us today. Take justice into your hands? Maybe not. But take freedom and lift it up to God that our land may remain a statute of time and of hope for that which is yet to come.