(Yesterday was Independence Day in the US. I ask my friends in other places to indulge me a bit in this week’s hymn.)
O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine ev’ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self control,
Thy liberty in law.
Katharine Lee Bates, 1892
Read Hebrews 11:13-16
(This is verse 3, perhaps not sung as often as the others. The word that caught my attention was ‘pilgrim.’ It is all too easy to get entangled in culture and the politics, to focus on the failures and the ills of our society, but we are pilgrims. No matter who the governor or the president is, our allegiance is first and foremost to our King, Jesus. We look back to the day when He proclaimed, “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed.” (Luke 4:18)
We long for the day when that is fully realized, and commit ourselves to the truth that liberty is not a grant of a political system but a gift through the grace of Almighty God.)