Blogging on the 4th

Here’s a great juxtaposition of technologies: I’m sitting in my front drive, blogging via a wireless connection while overseeing the creation of homemade ice cream in our 25 year old Sears, Roebuck & Company electric freezer. I suppose a more dramatic contrast would involve a hand-cranked freezer, but then I couldn’t blog, so what’s the point?

Abbye’s lying next to my chair, ears folded back. She’s a little skeptical of the grinding, twitching device. We don’t make homemade ice cream often enough for her to be accustomed to it. (And she’s really not happy when I have to bang around in the ice chest to break up the frozen clumps to add to the freezer. You just never know when that banging might be extended to adjacent dog-like creatures.)

It’s a wonderful thing to contemplate…the simple pleasure of a hot July afternoon in Midland, Texas, America, with a dependable stream of electricity to power our luxuries, and the privilege of owning property upon which to house them.

We joined a few thousand of our friends and neighbors in downtown Midland last night for an early celebration of Independence Day. We listened to hip-hop, gospel stomp, Sousa and good old patriotic music, secular and sacred alike. The evening was beautiful, and listening to the gathered mass sing God Bless America and The Star Spangled Banner was inspiring. The fireworks were excellent (someone finally figured out that the prevailing winds are from the south, and positioned the display to our north, sparing us from the past years’ usual smoke and spark fallout).

I suspect that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of similar celebrations repeated across the nation, and many of them undoubtedly had the same overtone as ours: we are blessed as a nation because a sovereign and holy God has chosen to do so. The remnant that understands this truth may be falling in number (I’m not convinced of that), but its dedication remains constant and I find tremendous comfort and encouragement in that realization.
God bless America. Indeed.