Guest Blogger: Lisa DeVinney, @lldevinney
with Marcie Bridges, @Marcie_Bridges

Lisa and I met sometime over the last year on Facebook. I greatly admire her poetic talents and her prose and I think you will be greatly blessed by her words as well. It is such a pleasure to have you as my guest this week, Lisa. Won’t you join  me in welcoming her?

WELCOME TO HEART THOUGHTS LISA! 

 

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord”  Psalm 33:12a
There Is an Answer – It’s in the Final Stanza
(The Star Spangled Banner) 
Have you ever noticed that our National Anthem ends with a question? I
was walking my dog this morning, and noticed an elderly neighbor,
stooped and shuffling slowly toward his flag pole. He reverently raised
his flag, carefully secured the rope, saluted, then went back into his
house.

Feeling overwhelmingly patriotic, I began to sing The
Star Spangled Banner
. But only loudly enough for my dog to hear. And
she can hear a squirrel in a tree on the other side of town. I’ve sung
the song many times (though not while walking through my neighborhood).
But as I reached the end of the anthem, I noticed, for the first time I
can recall, that it left me hanging. There was no finality. No mention
of victory. No rousing, patriotic conclusion. Just a simple, burning
question – is our banner of freedom still flying?

I wondered,
for a moment, if Mr. Key was gazing into the distance – not just across
the water, but through the corridors of time – to see a generation where
the flag no longer proclaimed the freedoms upon which our great country
was founded.

If he had ended his song there, as most
Americans do, Mr. Key would have left us with little hope for the
future. But he did not end there. And if we were to keep singing, all
the way to the end, we would find that not only did Mr. Key present a
pressing question, he also offered a solution for maintaining the
freedoms for which he and his compatriots so fervently fought.  Do
you know the words? I didn’t. But I do now. And it is my pleasure to
share with you the awesome truth found in the final stanza of our Star
Spangled Banner. 

“Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

– Francis Scott Key 

Mr. Key’s answer to preserving freedom was simply this: acknowledge the
One who has thus far made and preserved our nation. And continue to
place our trust in Him.
As history is rewritten, and our national
acknowledgement of God fades with the ink of our founding documents, our
freedoms seem to be fading, too.

How much longer will Old
Glory stand for those freedoms upon which our country was founded?
Perhaps as long as a faithful few continue to petition and praise the
Power that has preserved us. But when, as a nation, we defiantly turn
our backs on Him, and He removes His hand of protection from over us,
then we will look anew at Mr. Key’s question – “Oh, say does that
star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of
the brave?”

We must remember this: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord;” Psalm 33:12a

©Lisa DeVinney, March 2016

From Our Hearts to Yours,
Lisa and Marcie  
TWEET, TWEET!

Lisa
DeVinney is a homemaker and mother of six in upstate New York.  In her spare time, she enjoys photography and
writing devotional poetry. Lisa is the author of several books, including her
latest devotional entitled Rivers in the Desert.  You can find her poetry at LiftingMyEyes.com.

 

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