Postscript to yesterday . . .


What irony! Sometimes on Saturday we turn to AMC to watch old westerns. Yesterday we disccovered that John Wayne was being featured, westerns and WWII movies. After I had written the post a new movie came on that was about the war between the states--with a Union focus. (Those are hard for me because I am so Southern that I feel that my loyalties are being tested. Crazy, I know, but I digress.) The movie opened with Union officers discussing strategy that would enable them to block the Confederates from using the Mississippi River between about Memphis and New Orleans. The river was the South's lifeline and as long as they controlled access, the North could be defeated. The ironic part was that the North did capture Vicksburg, MS, essential to the South, on the Fourth of July. The area was no longer free and until recent years the city of Vicksburg did not celebrate the Fourth. I had forgotten. What price freedom! Thinking of that war brings me to a point of sadness I cannot express. Thank God we are One Nation Under God--whether it is acknowled by all or not.

Reading the Sunday paper a little while ago, I came across a column entitled, "July 4 Celebration Spiced with Gratitude." It piqued my interest because of yesterday's post. In it was a quote from an Erma Bombeck column on an earlier Fourth of July. She said: You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism. She had a way with words.

Let's hear it for patriotism however it manifests itself.

Blessings and Happy 4th,
Pastor Margaret