America's collective legacy

America is celebrating 250 years of freedom this year. This freedom is not a guarantee, but a costly gift purchased with great sacrifice to secure the blessings of liberty. This sense of duty to a greater good was embodied by our Founding Fathers. They openly defied the most powerful empire in the world and signed the Declaration of Independence while risking deadly charges of treason. These men lost their homes and individual security, faced political division, and suffered personal attacks while committing their honor and legacy to an unproven experiment that was based on the values they held dear.

Since 1776, about 10 generations of Americans have collectively paid the price for the nation’s precious religious liberties. These generations have experienced sons and daughters being sent to war, blood being spilled on battlefields, military families enduring separation and hardship, and men and women standing for freedom when it costs them dearly.

Younger American generations struggle to appreciate this sense of sacrifice in a country that prioritizes personal comfort and convenience over character, emphasizes rights while neglecting responsibilities, and assumes security rather than defends it. Ease is expected while hardship feels
unfamiliar and unwelcome. Today’s young people are rarely required to demonstrate the kind of courage that secured foundational freedoms now enjoyed in modern American life.

The contribution

By honoring sacrifices of the past and reframing entitlement as appreciation, older generations can help steward future gratitude for the freedoms enjoyed today. Nations are not shaped in the legislature, but in the living rooms of family homes.

The birthday festivities celebrating the story of this great nation are worthy of honor. But it is critical to realize that your family’s story is woven into the fabric of an even greater story – America’s next 250 years. Every choice, every conversation, every act of courage, every display of noble character, and every gesture of faith contribute to our collective legacy as a country.

Countercultural role modeling calls for prioritizing conviction over convenience, courage over apathy, service over self-interest, character over comfort, and faith over fear.

I encourage you to reflect on the ways your family can exercise religious freedom for the good of the nation:

Will your family’s story speak gratitude for the blessings of freedom, or will your family be complacent and take those blessings for granted?

Will your family be known for courage and conviction in your faith, or will your family succumb to the world’s pressures and become content?

Will your family tell a story of God’s faithfulness even in times of trial, or will your family keep their Christian faith private and personal?

Steward well the freedom you’ve been given. Live intentionally in the freedom of Christ. Serve, lead, and disciple children who understand both the cost and the calling of their freedom of faith. Honor the sacrifices in your family legacy. Show gratitude for military families who put their lives on the line.

The challenge

Let us take up the challenge given by Abraham Lincoln in the storied Gettysburg Address: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Nations rise and fall, but faith legacies endure for families who are rooted in the freedom of Christ. Let us boldly steward America’s legacy of religious freedom in the land of the free and the home of the brave.