Hammer on Anvil '

  A short story: After graduating college I moved back home for a while and began to attend my home church again. The Sunday following the 4^th of July, we celebrated like most churches do. Everyone’s clothes had a patriotic tendency and we are all still excited from the fireworks we had seen and/or shot off the night before. During the service we stood to say the Pledge of Allegiance and as we were singing songs, standing and sitting at different times (called by some Baptist calisthenics) we came to the song “I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb”…and we were sitting. This hit me hard and I was furious at myself and everyone else for sitting there and singing that song. After what seemed an eternity then, the Pastor stood up and we followed his example. I wrote later in a journal that I felt we failed miserably in our worship service that day. We had shown greater honor to a flag, a symbol of a temporal kingdom, than we did to Him we claim to follow, worship, call Savior and King.

  You may ask what my point is in the story. While I could go on and address different issues that arise this time a year in our churches (no doubt if you didn’t hear a sermon this past Sunday on patriotism or the “Christian nation,” you will this coming), I’d rather keep this blog brief. Instead I leave you with a couple questions that litter my notebooks and my mind juggles a lot.

    --What do we mean when we say “Christian nation”?

    --How do we balance being an American and Christian (“our citizenship is in heaven”)?

Brett  

 Vicit agnus noster, eum sequamur   

 Our Lamb has conquered; him let us follow.