America is a Different Kind of Story.
R.M. Hamilton
When I was seventeen, Dad moved our family to the United States to pursue some higher education. I had a student dependent’s visa, probably one of the most restrictive visas you can get. I couldn’t work and I couldn’t study, and I thank God for that visa and its limitations with all my heart. Because of the limitations of that visa, I spent a lot of time in the library. I’ve always loved history and being from New Zealand, a member of the British Commonwealth, most of the history I knew was English. When I moved to America, I fell in love with the place and the people so much that I switched my reading from English history to American history.
All history reads like a novel. And novels always have main characters. Here lies the main difference between a volume of American history and a volume of English history. In English history, the main characters are almost always well born and powerful. That’s not always the case of course, you get the occasional mention of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things, but for the most part, English history follows the royals and the aristocrats as its main characters. There are a lot of kings, queens, dukes, and earls in English history.
But open a volume of American history and all that changes. Who are the heroes of the American tale? Who are the great figures in American history before they become great figures? They are farmers, they are lawyers, they are surveyors, they are silversmiths, they are preachers, they are teachers, they are fathers and mothers.
They are utterly normal people.
I hear a lot of worrying things about America these days. She is constantly in my prayers. But here is the secret I don’t think the enemies of America have understood.
America has never been a story of important, powerful people doing important, powerful things. America has always been the story of normal, ordinary people doing what is right.
I know empires fall. I know kings can be deposed. I know even free lands can fall to slavery.
But what can you do with a nation where greatness can arise from anywhere? What can you do with a nation founded on faith? What can you do with a nation where farmers, bakers and candle stick makers can suddenly rise and start doing what is right, merely because it is right?
I’ll tell you what you can’t do with a nation like that.
You can’t be sure it’s over.
What was it Francis Scott Key wrote?
“And the rockets red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Gave prove through the night
That our flag was still there.”
That’s America in a nutshell. America isn’t the Star Spangled Banner blowing gracefully in a garden full of red geraniums on a warm summer day. That’s very pretty, but it’s not America.
It’s not really America until you don’t know if that flag will continue to fly. It’s not America until you have to believe that it WILL continue to fly, despite the night and the rockets and the uncertainty.
To my American friends I say this. I love your land and I have read your history. I have lived in America. I know what you are.
And I do not believe for one moment that it is over for America.
Because you are still a land full of ordinary, normal, upstanding people who will do what is right, merely because it is right.
And when you think about it like that, you realize, you are writing with your lives right now, the most extraordinary chapter of your history book so far.
Love from Ruthie.
The writing belongs to R.M. Hamilton. Feel free to share it where ever encouragement is needed. I retain publication rights. The picture of New England is graciously provided by Pixabay.