Happy Independence Day!

Sometimes it is overwhelming when trying to comprehend the magnitude of what took place during those days in July of 1776.  For us, 200+ years later, freedom from a controlling or colonial power is expected and even commonplace.  For our founding fathers, it was not.  No colony had broken off from a "mother country" in the history of the world to that point.  And if considering doing so wasn't monumental enough, to consider doing so from the most powerful and wealthy nation in the world was what seemed to be an insurmountable task. 

Yet, we achieved it.  And we achieved it by not only winning militarily, but our founders infused into a merely revolutionary document (The Declaration of Independence) statements regarding rights and freedoms.  They stated for the whole world to see that this was more than a war against tyranny and oppression, it was a statement of human dignity.  It was a broadcast to the world then and for generations to come that our Lord God made us free and no one on earth had/has the right to take that from us.  That is what is overwhelming sometimes to ponder, yet ponder it we must, perhaps even more so during these times than the times in which it was written.  We must always remember what those brave men had the courage to sign, at risk of their lives and those of their families, an incredible "expression of the American mind" that forever enshrined the values upon which this nation was founded.  May God bless America!