I had an epiphany in the shower this morning. For some reason, I was singing patriotic songs in the shower, and I wondered as I did so if they all mentioned God or deity after some fashion, because at first I didn't believe they did. Since I learned all the verses to these songs as a Boy Scout, I was able to go through them all in the shower without looking them up.
During the Olympics, I bemoaned the apparent fact that some of our athletes either care little for our national anthem or don't know the words. Watch athletes from other nations, in particular Canada, during the Vancouver Olympics, and you will find many of them sing along while ours grin stupidly. I attended a hockey game the other night, and the group with which I went stood there stupidly while I stopped, placed my hand over my heart in reverence and listened to the national anthem although we were not yet in the arena. When I saw the Red Sox play the Orioles in Boston last fall, many of the fans around me talked to each other during the anthem.
All of our patriotic songs pay homage to that Creator from whom our rights come. That might surprise you. For your benefit, I list the relevent stanzas here:
Star Spangled Banner [Francis Scott Key 1814](fourth stanza)
During the Olympics, I bemoaned the apparent fact that some of our athletes either care little for our national anthem or don't know the words. Watch athletes from other nations, in particular Canada, during the Vancouver Olympics, and you will find many of them sing along while ours grin stupidly. I attended a hockey game the other night, and the group with which I went stood there stupidly while I stopped, placed my hand over my heart in reverence and listened to the national anthem although we were not yet in the arena. When I saw the Red Sox play the Orioles in Boston last fall, many of the fans around me talked to each other during the anthem.
All of our patriotic songs pay homage to that Creator from whom our rights come. That might surprise you. For your benefit, I list the relevent stanzas here:
Star Spangled Banner [Francis Scott Key 1814](fourth stanza)
O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
My Country Tis of Thee [Samuel Francis Smith 1831] (fourth stanza)
Our fathers' God to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright,
With freedom's holy light,
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King.
Battle Hymn of the Republic [Julia Ward Howe 1861] (in its entirety)
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
While God is marching on.
America the Beautiful [Katherine Lee Bates 1895] (first and second stanzas, chorus repeats)
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
My Country Tis of Thee [Samuel Francis Smith 1831] (fourth stanza)
Our fathers' God to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright,
With freedom's holy light,
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God our King.
Battle Hymn of the Republic [Julia Ward Howe 1861] (in its entirety)
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.
(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
While God is marching on.
America the Beautiful [Katherine Lee Bates 1895] (first and second stanzas, chorus repeats)
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
God Bless America [1918 by Irving Berlin] (in its entirety)
God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home.
George Washington said that "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything. Abraham Lincoln attributed the plagues of the Civil War to an abandonment of allegience to God. In his declaration of a national day of prayer and fasting (1863), he said:
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
God Bless America [1918 by Irving Berlin] (in its entirety)
God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home.
George Washington said that "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything. Abraham Lincoln attributed the plagues of the Civil War to an abandonment of allegience to God. In his declaration of a national day of prayer and fasting (1863), he said:
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
We have truly forgotten God. Fortunately, he remembers us.
We are involved in the same war that has always been waged on earth. The destiny of men and of nations is always contested. It is time that God sent forth a great army to revive a dying world. Although we bear no responsibility for the choices and transgressions of former generations, we carry full the burden of our own. We must succeed. When in doubt, look upward; when you fall, seek mercy, for this is our charge, our privilege and our sacred duty, to gather our brothers and sisters and return with honor.
Then conquer we must when our cause it is just
And this be our motto: In God is Our Trust
May God grant that we be always protected by him so long as there remain a band of Christians in the land, not by name only but by their fruits. Godspeed the right.
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