INDEPENDENCE DAY

I am guessing that starting today, there will be many patriotic messages posted, so I wanted to get ahead of the bow wake.... We have it so good. Every day. Day in, day out. Clean streets. Garbage pick-up. Churches. This newspaper. Automobiles. House and home. Especially the home part. Acceptance. Rights. Privileges. Opportunities. Safety. Protection. We are blessed! And I am af...raid we don’t think about that enough. We aren’t grateful enough. We take too much for granted. Take a close look at some of the images of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Egypt. A real look. Think about the situation along our Mexican border. What we see on the news IS THEIR REALITY. Just try to imagine living in those circumstances. But it is like something out of a movie. Something imaginary and that’s part of what concerns me. It has all become so familiar, yet distant; it doesn’t seem real. In many ways this situation, a situation of becoming used to things, troubling things, reminds me of the time during the Viet Nam War and some of the daily news we’d get. Many of you are too young to remember or maybe even know about this. News coverage then wasn’t what it is now, where there are cameras watching the war happen live. But there were daily news reports. And one of the things I most specifically remember was the daily casualty count. Most nights on the news there would be a report of how many American casualties (deaths!) there were as compared to how many the enemy had. I’m not sure how anyone really knew that. It got reported like a baseball score. Maybe more like a football score, the numbers were that big. Not single digits. Daily. And over time, just like the images we see today and the live news we get today, we got used to it. We actually got used to it! “Oh, we had a good day today, more of them died than us!” How we didn’t weep every night, I don’t really understand. My fear is that because we have taken so much for granted, because we so easily get so used to things, we abuse what we’ve got. Politicians don’t do their jobs. Citizens don’t do theirs. We grumble and fume over the silliest of things. We let personalities get in the way of progress. We become selfish, resentful, jealous, angry, abusive, entitled. So it is the 4th of July. Have some ice cream, a cookout, take a boat ride. I’m going to. But this year I’m going to really think about how blessed I am. How blessed this country is. I am going to give serious thought to the price paid for those blessings. If given the opportunity, I am going to go up to that service person or vet and personally thank them. I am thank the good Lord above for this country and the blessings bestowed upon us. How blessed I am! How blessed we are!