America's King

We've been reading the Little House on the Prairie books lately.  In the seventh book, Little Town on the Prairie, I was impressed by a passage.  In this passage Laura describes the first Independence Day celebration held in De Smet which she attended with her sister and father.  After a reading of the Declaration of Independence, they sing 'My Country Tis of Thee', and she shares the following thoughts:

"The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still.  Suddenly she had a completely new thought.  The Declaration and the song came together in her mind, and she thought: God is America's king. 

"She thought: Americans won't obey any king on earth.  Americans are free.  That means they have to obey their own consciences.  No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself.  Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn't anyone else who has a right to give me orders.  I will have to make myself be good.

"Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought.  This is what it means to be free.  It means, you have to be good.  "Our father's God, author of liberty-" The laws of Nature and of Nature's God endow you with a right to life and liberty.  Then you have to keep the law of God, for God's law is the only thing that give you a right to be free."

I LOVE this.  To be free means being good and keeping the law of God, for otherwise we lose our freedoms.  Good choices liberate and bad choices bring bondage.  God is America's king!  May we strive to keep it that way.