This Saturday will mark America’s 233rd birthday. As celebrations occur across the country and at our own fairgrounds, every American citizen should take the day to reflect upon what occurred inside Independence Hall on July 4, 1776, when 56 delegates met together in Philadelphia to decide the future of America.

Their actions prompted Benjamin Franklin, one of the delegates from Pennsylvania to state, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately,” because their signatures upon that document would be taken as an act of treason against Britain and punishable by death.

There is no single document in our nation’s history more important than the Declaration of Independence. Without it, we would not be the country we are today.

That 233-year-old parchment paper “…is the official birth certificate of the United States of America. It declared our commitment to freedom and guaranteed our basic rights. Every freedom we have as Americans comes from the Declaration of Independence. It is the foundation for our other precious documents, the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Bill of Rights. Without the Declaration, our country would not be “the land of the free” as we know it today.”

It should never be forgotten that the freedoms we enjoy and often take for granted are given to us, not by man nor government, but by God himself. The founding fathers understood this and made note of it in the declaration when they penned, “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.”

Those individuals who pursue the notion of separation of church and state fail to realize that without God there is no church, state or “unalienable rights.”

God ordains governments in order to insure individual rights of life, liberty and happiness. Unfortunately Godless men become leaders of countries, deny God’s omnipotence presence in our world and we end up with the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.

Our country has been blessed since day one by God, and there is no way our young country could have overcome the many obstacles it faced without His guiding presence.

There is a lot of food for thought in the last couple of paragraphs and I encourage you to mull it over Saturday as we celebrate our nation’s birthday with food, fun and fellowship.

As you gather at the fairgrounds to enjoy the day’s events, I invite you to stop by Padilla Hall and visit the concession booth the VFW will have open and return at 2 p.m. for bingo.

May God be ever protective of our men and women in uniform stationed around the world and may He continue to bless America.