What I'm thankful for on this Fourth of July

On this Fourth of July, I’m thankful for what makes America unique: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

I’m thankful for the principles they embody, the people who wrote them, and the thirteen original states that bravely set out to be what had never been, a national republic.

I’m thankful to those who have understood these two documents as ideals to live up to and enact.

I’m thankful that my immigrant ancestors and I have been privileged to live in a land whose founding documents allowed them to a live in freedom, a freedom undergirded by mutual commitment and accountability.

I’m thankful for the patriots who have committed blood, brains, and braun to keep America moving, often slowly and arduously, toward the ideal of an indivisible republic with liberty and justice for all. We’re not there, but the commitment to the quest for such a republic is there in our founding documents.

I’m thankful that, despite ourselves, God has graced us with women and men of every nation who, forged together as Americans around our twin founding compacts, have brought our nation and world great good.

I’m thankful for the humble prophets among us who have called us to do better, to be Americans. May their courageous number never be in short supply.

I’m thankful to God for those who have protected America.

I’m thankful to God for America: for what it is and, more importantly, for what it has the potential for becoming if we will embrace the historic call of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

And I refuse to despair when, from time to time, the nation seems bent on yielding to a “survival of the fittest” despotism. I still believe in the American Experiment, a land that seeks to be a place where, paraphrasing Emma Lazarus, whose words appear on the Statue of Liberty, the “poor, [the] huddled masses yearning to breathe free, [the] wretched...the homeless, tempest-tost” from this land and others can be formed into a people known as Americans, a people who seek freedom and opportunity as much as for others as they do for themselves, day in and day out, people of the Declaration and the Constitution.

Happy Fourth of July, friends.