THE GIFT OF FREEDOM

This month we celebrated the 232th birthday of our nation. For all these years, America has stood as a beacon of freedom—never afraid to rise to challenges. Though new tests challenge our independence today, together we can preserve the dream called freedom for our children and future generations.

Freedom is a precious gift. Our gratitude should be deepened when we realize the great price our forefathers paid to establish freedom in our nation. Every day we enjoy many freedoms because someone took our place to make them possible.

The Declaration of Independence is our birth certificate. Fifty-six men signed this great document. Twenty-four of the signers were lawyers and jurists, eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners. They were men of means and well-educated, but they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.

And, indeed, they gave their lives to give us the gift of freedom. Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and were tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army and another had two sons captured.

We take our liberties so much for granted when our hearts should overflow with gratefulness for what so many willingly gave to make it possible for us to live in this great land. Freedom is never free. The cost is immense.

Only the United States of America has succeeded these past two hundred and thirty-two years in bringing forth a “new order of the ages.” Many countries have fought revolutions. Many have proclaimed the rights of man. But America has from the beginning acknowledged her liberties as a gracious endowment from a loving God. Thomas Jefferson had put the Americans’ case well: “The God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” It is a powerful acknowledgment that our liberties, our independence, and our very life as a people are dependent upon the power and might of the Lord.

Engraved on the Statue of Liberty are the words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe “free.” May our nation always uphold the integrity, the courage, and the strength to remain a citadel of freedom and a beacon of hope to the world.


--Fern Nilson
National Honorary Leader
National Day of Prayer