Summary: One year later... This is the podcast I sent out on memorial day, 2011, one week after the tornado that ripped through Joplin on May 22, 2011. SOME MORNINGS, I struggle just to get out of bed. Yet, who am I, to bemoan the creaks and the pops and the stiff joints, when Jesus suffered a thousand times more than I. No, today is not a day to think about my pain or my suffering. These dwindle to nothing, in the light of the suffering that God went through in allowing His Son to go through the humiliation and death of the cross. Of Jesus who suffered at the hands of the very sinful men He was dying to save... My suffering even dwindles when I think how many of our peoples have suffered and died for the freedom we have to celebrate our God and our Savior. Yes, in light of all these I am nothing. So let us join together in praise and worship of a wonderful Lord and Savior, whom so many have fought for the right for us to worship and believe in. A blessed Memorial Day to you. In God We Trust “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.” – George Washington “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.” –Thomas Jefferson “[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure, than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.” – John Adams “...The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ ” – Benjamin Franklin “Were my soul trembling on the wing of eternity, were this hand freezing to death, were my voice choking with the last struggle, I would still, with the last gasp of that voice, implore you to remember the truth: God has given America to be free.” – Patrick Henry “And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.” – Abraham Lincoln “Let us look forward to the time when we can take the flag of our country and nail it below the Cross, and there let it wave as it waved in the olden times, and let us gather around it and inscribed for our motto: ‘Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever,’ and exclaim, ‘Christ first, our country next!’ ” – Andrew Johnson “We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic. Where we have been the truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts, we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity.” – Franklin Roosevelt “Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God,
