What Does Independence Mean?

Here's another post I wrote some years back. As I read it, I realized that most of what I said then is still relevant today, so I decided to dust it off and re-present it to you along with your Fourth of July apple pie.  I trust that while you’re having that second helping  you would stop to reflect on what independence means to you and to America.


What does Independence truly mean? Does it only mean having the ability to govern ourselves? Free from outside control, as the Oxford dictionary tells us? Or does it mean not depending on anyone? America is known as the land of the free and the home of the brave. But lately we have to ask ourselves who are the free and who are the brave?


Freedom may be limited, but bravery abounds. We have to be brave to walk the streets at nights, brave to send our children to school, brave to mention the name of Jesus in public. When over thirty six million people live in poverty in this, the richest country on earth, where is the independence? When children are the largest growing number of the nation’s poor, and words like outsourcing and downsizing are common everyday terms, where’s the independence?

I hate to spoil your celebrations, but we need to examine ourselves. As more people lose their healthcare, prices of basic commodities continue to rise, and wars rage at home and abroad, we need to depend more on God. The Bible tells us, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding" (Proverbs 3: 5).

Think about that as you dig into that apple pie.

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