The Lantern & The lamb
God Bless America!
Happy 250th Birthday to the United States of America!
7/5/20261 min read
Today, July 4, 2026, marks the 250th birthday of the USA! And I’m so dang proud to be an American!
This year the World Cup is hosted by the United States, and I have to admit that I am fully addicted to the small video clips I’ve seen on social media of visitors from other countries experiencing the States for the first time, and just how wonderful of a country and people we are. It’s been so refreshing! Sometimes I feel there’s a rhetoric that us Americans are supposed to feel almost ashamed for being an American and loving our country; we should be ashamed that our ancestors owned slaves (many of our ancestors, including mine, came after the Civil War and never owned slaves), we should feel shame for being a country of freedom and “such and such” country has it so much worse, we should feel shame for our country and its wealth (even though many of us financially struggle paycheck to paycheck, including mine). There’s so much shame to be an American, and I feel like so many of us have fallen into that guilt mentality because “we have it better” and should also hate our country for any past atrocity.
But watching these clips from the World Cup have reignited my sense of patriotism and desire to instill that love for the States in my children. We all need to remember that it’s okay to have extreme love for your country while recognizing its mistakes. Both of those can coexist, it’s not one or the other.
On this birthday of the land that I love, I pray God continues to guide our country, encourages more people to turn to Him, and graces all of us with Us and leadership.
God Bless America!