Where does our world lie between secular and sacred?
Today we are remembering and honoring so many men and women from past generations who sacrificed their lives, so that we may feel no constraints of freedom. I wonder if these men and women would feel honored with how this generation’s authorities are honoring their rights to freedom. It only took two decades following the Second World War for the Supreme Court of the United States to prohibit school officials from organizing or leading Bible reading or prayer exercises in schools.
In my home growing up, my Mom would force praying on us and others. It was not a choice. If I shared some issue or challenge I was facing, she would say, let’s pray about it and start praying. This happened almost every phone call during my college years. Needless to say, I didn't feel heard, and I was not all that confident in my own convictions and beliefs.
Although I did not choose this way of forced prayer, I’m grateful that God was in our house. I'm thankful I was exposed to religion and attended church. These foundations initiated a desire to learn more and gather more information so that I could establish my own beliefs and gain understanding of the truth of Christ on my own. Although, I have seen others who have chosen to turn from God and harden their hearts because of human involvement and forced opinions. The underlying factor to following and accepting Christ is ultimately faith.
Time has given all of us an opportunity to learn how so many others have lived their childhood. Many of the encounters with other children who were in school with my kids didn't see their Mothers because they were working two or three jobs to put food on the table and put a roof over their heads. Their fathers were not in their lives.
Many of these children were held together with the glue of faith in God, which they were exposed to in their homes. They also witnessed sacrifice by their mothers. On the other hand, those unfortunate children who had no expression of the love of God in their homes were denied this opportunity of exposure to love or faith due to the absence of bible study or prayer in their daily routines at school.
The number of Americans exposed to God, and therefore a basis for belief in absolute values of right and wrong, is dwindling. The rise of anxiety and depression in our younger generations is prominent. Kids struggle when boundaries are not established and enforced. Exposure to God has solely been limited to the household and the wonders of nature in this current generation.
The increase of the number of screen exposure in this generation is innumerable. The material on display on these screens is rarely moral. There is a visible divide being created in our world that may be impossible to reverse. This is not the first time our world has been subject to enforced limitation on freedom. This is noted in this very remarkable day to honor and memorialize those who have fought for our freedom.
We must continue to do our jobs to spread love and let freedom reign. We must keep God-given freedom of religion sacred for all to receive. God bless those who have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice for freedom, and all who fight to keep our world sacred.
John 15: 13
“Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friend.”
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