Be Safe!

"Be Safe!" I don't know how many members of my congregation told me that as the left services yesterday morning.

"Be safe." What kind of holiday greeting is that? We're enjoined to have a "happy" New Year and a "merry" Christmas. Many wish each other a "blessed" Easter and a "good" Thanksgiving. But when it comes to Independence Day we recommend each other "be safe."

Of course, Independence Day is now called the "4th of July" and I'm certain that the majority of my fellow citizens no longer connect the events that led up to the American Colonies severing ties with Great Britain and the holiday which is celebrated.

Today the "4th of July" is associated with overindulgence in food and alcohol (mostly alcohol) and the desire to blow the living crap out of something. Great combination that. I don't profess to any understanding as to why blowing shit up is so damn attractive to people whose IQ may well be below the sum of the combination of their shoe size and age - but damn if it isn't.

Apparently there's enough common knowledge that the combination of alcohol and things that blow up isn't good that the Federal Government has the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) But that knowledge doesn't seem to extend to the multitude of "rocket" scientists who sent themselves and/or their children to Emergency Rooms around the country last night while having attempted to entertain themselves with inexpensive alcohol and illegal rocketry.

I'm fairly certain that most of the explosive devices I heard my neighbors exploding last night could not legally have be purchased in the state in which I live. A couple of the window-rattlers probably aren't legal in the USA at all - so these people of below average intelligence (who probably could have been as entertained by an evening of 'wrastlin' on TV or an old episode of the Jerry Springer Show) made interstate trips (perhaps international expeditions) to procure shit that explodes.

I'm certain that many of these fine citizens would call upon their "right" to do what they'd like without any knowledge of where those rights came from and the duties those rights call us to. The events that led to the Declaration of Independence stirred the souls of men of character to act - knowing that by pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor they were sacrificing their lives and fortunes for the benefit of others.

Those, who 234 years later think that the signers of the Declaration gave them the right to be stupid, would benefit from a short history lesson - if they weren't too ignorant to comprehend that from those to whom much has been given much is expected. Few in this world have been given the gift that the signers of the Declaration have given us.

Finally, God shed his Grace not just on the United States, but on all the nations of the world. We are not superior - if anything the actions of my neighbors last night touts our inferiority.

Be safe.
AFF