The Gift And The Giver

By: Travis Lewis

July 1, 2012

Following is an essay composed in 2012 near the Independence Day holiday. The associated photo shows the author as he hoists the American flag on the new flagpole on the front lawn of the family home near Lexington, Tennessee.

Today was the Sunday “worship service” just prior to the Independence Day holiday at our church. Whether proper or improper for service purported to worship God, we sang and listened to arrangements of patriotic songs amongst the pledges to the flag and our republic. I must acknowledge the refreshing emotions that America the Beautiful and Battle Hymn of the Republic still obviously bring to congregations in general and ours in particular.

And rightfully so! It is only right that we pay tribute to God for this wonderful land which the world calls America and that we call home. At such a land with its rich soils and beautiful lakes, clear winding rivers and looming mountains, sprawling rich farmland and luscious forests, we should ever stand in awe. And we often do. After all, other than mankind, no other part of nature is endowed with the capacity to contemplate and wonder at its Creator’s handiwork, and to be humbled by such an experience.

Not only have we been given the vastness and wonders of this land’s natural resources, but our Declaration of Independence mentions certain inalienable rights with which we are endowed, meaning that with which we have been placed in possession.

I assume that we regard all this as a gift, considering that a gift is something which, being in possession of, we enjoy identifiable benefits that we have not earned. So, wherever there is a gift, a giver is essential, and, without a giver, no gift exists.

Consequently, I wondered if we often adore the gift more than, or other than, the giver. A few days from now, we will listen to our nation’s officials paying tribute to our freedom and independence, and maybe even make mention of the honorable men by whom the ideas of our independence and freedom were first put to pen. All these gifts will be praised and brought into focus time and again. Yet, I wonder if we are praising the acorn and forgetting the oak tree – the giver – whence it came.

The land we love and revere and which we go to great lengths to preserve was here in most, if not even more in some respects, of its present grandeur long before the patriots tired of their servitude to King George. The ideas framed by our Constitution were gleaned from recorded wisdom of men of old who had observed truths taught by natural law. But, in whose mind did natural law first spawn? Thus, must not our Constitution be regarded as a gift as well? So, let us not forget that neither the “spacious skies o’er amber waves of grain”, nor the framework of ideas which we call our Constitution originated in the mind of man. At best, though often with great price, we can only preserve them both.

So, if these are gifts, then of necessity, there must be a giver. But who is the giver? Without shame, I suggest the “giver” to be an, or rather “the”, Almighty, our Creator – God – spoken of as sovereign in the Holy Bible and worshipped still today by genuine believers in the Son who was incarnated, showed us how to live, then died and rose again, thus becoming our Redeemer.

So, adore and be ferocious to preserve the gift of being the freest people on earth, but worship and give thanks to the Giver, for no gift from man can match the gift from the greatest Giver of them all – our Creator. Ω ©