And indeed, He Has. There can be little doubt that, in all of history, no nation has experienced more continuous prosperity throughout its entire lifetime than the United States of America. You may be saying to yourself, “Yes, I know this is true,” but have you ever wondered why our nation has been the recipient of such great blessings?
The answer to this question, I firmly believe, can be found in the words of one of our most patriotic hymns, “America the Beautiful”:
O Beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!1
God shed His grace on thee. Could this really be the cause of the greatness of our country? As with anything in life, whenever we view the outward effect of a situation, we know that somewhere there must be a cause or a reason behind the reality we see.
As we journey back through time, we cannot help but be impressed by the tremendous effect the Bible has had in molding, shaping and influencing this great nation we live in. I dare say that the Bible is as American as baseball, apple pie and Coca Cola. No book in our history has left such an indelible imprint on our very fabric and heritage as the Holy Scriptures.
Now, before you think I am being sacrilegious by placing the Bible on the same plane with such Americana as baseball and apple pie, let’s examine the evidence.
The Cornerstone
Symbols play an important role in all societies around our globe. If you have ever been to New York City, one thing you will never forget is the tremendous number of skyscrapers that engulf the island of Manhattan. Many of these buildings are fifty, sixty and even 100 stories high. They stand as a shining testimony of the great heights to which our country has been able to soar during its 240-plus year history.
But with any great structure, whether it be a building such as the Empire State Building or a country such as the United States, the key to its success lies in its strong foundation. Without a strong foundation, even great structures begin to totter, fail and fall.
To build a 100-story building we must lay a foundation deep underground before we can even start to build. And for a country such as America to have become such a magnificently prosperous and free land, it too must have been built on solid bedrock, and that bedrock was the Bible.
In tomorrow’s devotion we will begin to take a panoramic view of some of the evidence to support this claim.
1 The Rebirth of America (Philadelphia: Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, 1986), p. 13. (Words by Katharine Lee Bates).