Freedom Trail

It's a good day.  The sun has been out, mostly, and I have been riding a train all day with Trew, my newly turned 11-year-old.  We are on the 11th day of our 3 week trip discovering America!  


As we were coming along the coast this morning from Boston to New York, I was delighted by the sun sparkling off the water, all the sail boats and motor boats on the water, the Cape Cod-type homes surrounding the water and the happily worn piers jutting out into the water.  I love the water.  Somewhere inside of me I believe that someday I will live on the water.  It draws me.  It is like a happy pill to my soul.


My thoughts then turned to (for about the 100th time during this trip) what a very beautiful country I live in.  Then I began to think about some of the history that we have been learning (or re-learning, in my case) along the way.  It stirs my patriotic spirit within me when I think of the men and women who gave their lives for our country and the freedoms that we have.  Other countries have amazing ancient history and I use to think how sad that things are just not that old here in America.  But lately, I have come to more fully appreciate our hard-won freedom to carve a new republic.  The exciting characters, both named and un-named, who left family and familiarity so I can live where I live today.  The early pioneers, who blazed dirt trails where we now have high rises.  Wow.  I felt overwhelmed with thankfulness, thankful for our American trail blazers, thankful for various freedoms I enjoy, thankful that I live in this amazingly beautiful, easy to traverse country.  It was just about that point in my musings when, as we were pulling into NYC, that I saw a building with these words in gold letters on the side:


"Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?"  Lamentations 1:12


That fit!  I was wondering why, it seems, that so many take our liberties so lightly.  Why do I take them so lightly?  Is it nothing to me?....to us collectively, as a nation?  Do we pass it by as passe'?  Nothing to sweat--this loss of liberty, of freedoms.  It does not affect us personally...or does it?  When will we wake up?  When it is too late?  Do we not value what others lost or gave up so that we might have these freedoms?  These are serious matters to ponder.  Ponder....and act upon.  I would personally encourage everyone to get involved and work hard to keep our freedoms, at whatever level you are able. What does that mean for you?  I don't know.  I don't always know what it means for me.  But I pray about being ready for whatever I may need to do or see to do.  I may not have blazed the original freedom trails but I can do my part to maintain them.  I owe that to those who came before me, and to those who will come after me.