250 Years of Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Two hundred and fifty years.

That’s not a number you say quickly. Say it slow. And let it sink in. Two. Hundred. And. Fifty. Years.

That’s 250 years of blood, sweat, and tears poured into an idea. The idea that a people could govern themselves, that liberty was worth the cost, that some things are worth dying for and worth living for in equal measure.

That’s 250 years of mothers standing on porches and in airports and at kitchen windows, saying goodbye to sons and daughters who put on a uniform and walked toward danger so the rest of us wouldn’t have to. Some of those goodbyes were the last ones. Every mother who ever whispered “come home” into her child’s shoulder before letting go knows something about this country that the rest of us only get to read about.

That’s 250 years of fathers standing a little straighter, throats a little tighter, hands snapping up in a salute they hope hides the tears. Proud in a way that costs something, proud the way only a father watching his child choose sacrifice can be proud.

This country has been battle-tested for two and a half centuries. Not just on foreign shores, but on our own soil, in our own arguments, through our own failures and reckonings and slow, hard-won corrections. We have not been perfect. No nation of sinners governing sinners ever will be. But we have kept getting back up. That’s not nothing. That might be everything.

I’m a pastor before I’m anything else, so I can’t talk about America without thinking about eternity. I believe our ultimate citizenship is in a kingdom that doesn’t end and a King who doesn’t fail. But I also believe gratitude is a Christian virtue, and today I am grateful. Genuinely, unapologetically grateful for the ground I stand on, the freedom I preach under, and the people who paid for both.

So today, on the 4th of July, in the 250th year of this improbable, imperfect, extraordinary experiment I’m proud to be an American.

Proud of the farmers who became soldiers.

Proud of the mothers who let go.

Proud of the fathers who saluted through tears.

Proud of every son and daughter who understood that some things are worth more than staying safe.

Happy birthday, America. Two hundred and fifty years in, and still worth every bit of blood, sweat, and tears it took to get here.

Living for eternity today and grateful for the country I get to live it in.