America's Greatest Gift

America is the mother of many things. From baseball to the model T Ford; from cross-continental railroads to the atomic bomb. But for all these achievements, I believe America’s greatest gift is a deeper, much more discrete quality. America’s greatest gift is not found in her Edisons or her moon landings, but rather that thing that called the early pilgrims to Plymouth shore, that thing called hope. It was what led terrified yet resolute rebels to stand rather than disperse. It was what made Madison, Paine, Henry, Franklin, Washington, and so many others to cry for liberty, even at the cost of death. Hope that one day, “freedom would ring” that it would ring from from every housetop and home. That every soul, no matter name or nationality, would unite under the banner of freedom. It was what urged the Mark Twains and the Roosevelts; the Lewises and the Clarks to search for a new life in the wild wilderness of the west. It is more than an emotion, it’s a drive, a grit, an absolute necessity to hope against hope. To dream deeper than today, no matter how bleak it may be, that is the greatest gift that America has given. It is the very thing which we must find today. We must dare to hope. We must hold onto hope, despite the darkness that looms before us. We must hope, or we have lost all chance of a brighter tomorrow. But what must we hope in? What can we turn to in an age where foundations are fragile? Not in ourselves, for our strength is limited and even our best fall. We must turn to the rock from which we were hewn. We must hope in God, that God in whom we trust. The one who has proven faithful, and the one who will prove faithful again if we the people again choose to be:

One nation, under God, 
Indivisible,
With Liberty, 
And Justice, 
For all.