“Now a new king came to power in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph.” Exodus 1: 8
This verse in scripture is ominous. You know as soon as you read it something bad is going to happen to the descendants of Joseph and all Israel. That line sets up the entire story of Israel in slavery. Those words begin an era of hardship.
There are many times throughout history that a sentence sets up a story line that we know will change the life of a nation or sometime just that person. We know for example that Marie Antoinette sealed her fate with the words: “Let them eat brioche.” Or as we translate it: “Let them eat cake.” We know that Sojourner Truth’s powerful words: “Ain’t I a woman,” helped people of the civil war era and beyond begin to realize that the color of a person’s skin did not make someone less human, a person to be treated differently. It is unfortunately a fight we still battle. And so, we continue Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream as we work toward equitable rights for all people. We know that Patrick Henry’s impassioned speech where he declared, “Give me liberty or give me death,” inspired the colonists to fight for freedom during the American Revolution. Freedom being more important to them than their very lives. Freedom our forefathers wrote about in the Declaration of Independence that was adopted on July 4th by the delegates of the 13 original colonies.
Words are powerful. And as those colonists of our nation’s history knew, they could no longer live under the burdensome laws of England. Like the ancient Israelites, we needed our freedom from oppression. We needed to be able to make laws that made sense to us and the circumstances that were part and parcel of living in a raw and untamed land. We needed independence. And so, on July 2nd in 1776, the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence and on July 4th the colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence, ushering in a war for freedom and the fight for our right to begin a new nation.
As we prepare to celebrate the 247th birthday of our nation, I offer the beginning of what would become the United States of America:
“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…”
With these beginning words of the Declaration of Independence, the authors changed history.
Happy Fourth of July.
Peace,
Pastor Beth
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