GOD GIVEN FREEDOM

                This week our nation celebrates our independence as one nation under God. It is God who has given us the privilege of living in an independent and prosperous nation while many in the world do not have this opportunity.

                In March 1861, the newly-elected President Abraham Lincoln, was traveling to Washington to take the oath of office. Stopping in Philadelphia, the President-elect told a group of well-wishers who had assembled at Independence Hall:

                “I have never had a single feeling about policy that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often [wondered] what great principle or idea it was that has kept us so long together. It was not the matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland; but rather that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave not only freedom to people in this country, but hope to the world for the future. [Freedom and Hope,] it was that which gave promise that in due time the weight of the world would be lifted from the shoulders of all