Members' Messages
Some thoughts about America the Beautiful
by Jenny Anglen
After listening to a beautifully performed version of "America the Beautiful" sometime during this past Memorial Day weekend, I felt I must respond to this, one of my favorite patriotic songs.
But, where are our spacious skies, now filled with cell phone and microwave towers blinking their obnoxious lights 24 hours each day? Even remote farm and ranch houses have their own “security” lights on at night. Our amber waves of grain have been transformed to brown, gray, and black parking lots. Our beautiful mountains are on fire due to mismanagement of their majestic forests. Our fruited plains are also black from fire because of drought, careless fire handling, or both.
We need God’s grace to restore brotherhood among our disagreeable groups.
Our heroes today are usually athletes and not those who fought to make our country the great nation it has become.
Refine our thoughts, God, to restore our former nobleness and our worship of the divine!
What happened to the dreams of the patriots? Who looks for a good and bountiful future when all we hear is gloom and doom? Our cities no longer gleam. The skies are brown from pollution. Most have a very small green area compared to buildings and pavement. Human tears are everywhere. Crime and killing, mostly created by drug use and jobless situations mar our country and cities.
We need to pray that God will mend our souls and our flaw and will return our self-control.
And we must remember that freedom is not free. If we do not create and follow our laws according to God’s laws, we will lose our liberty.
The Lyrics of Americia 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.
O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine, till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine.
O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.
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