Dear America,

Happy Sunday.

I was up rather early for a Sunday; I walked the dog out in the cold air breathing in a chill while feeling alive and blessed with a new day.  You're familiar with those days, no -- when you just have to let go of everything that is troubling you and you just let go and let God?

This is one of those. 

Even while making the coffee, I felt this sense of relief and thanksgiving; for I am a child of God.

With that, I sat with my thoughts from Friday and I took stock of where we are as a country.  I sat with all of it in my little head, just peacefully taking it all in...and then I turned on the T.V.  Ahh the serendipity of when the student is ready the teacher appears...this morning's ministers of faith slipped me this tall drink of water that quenched my spirits and filled me back up.

We will continue with the topic of abortion, I promise you.  But G is struck on this day with something even more powerful and life changing, while in my heart, I know I am not alone with the thought -- I know you share it with me.

As a country of faith, we are doing an excellent job giving our attention to that which does not sustain us;  matter of fact, our victim mentality, our life in defeat in conjunction with apologies for our wrong doings, our constant beating ourselves up for misgivings of our past, is so not who we are -- yet this is what we listen to and give our power over to as easily as a new day comes along.

In a wayward manner, we are allowing a government to lead us to the desert, ignoring our true faith and it's pathway to the well.  This is not who we are.

Martin Luther King gives us this:

"If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values -- that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control."

Our country was built on faith.  It was created from the bounty of everlasting life, inherent by our birth right as a child of God, to create a nation of a free people, with liberty and justice for all, with an ever increasing trust of our individual right to the pursuit of happiness and create our world.  It is based solely and completely upon our belief in a God -- not a little God, not an insignificant God subject to our whims, not a God of lack and limitation but a God Almighty and Everlasting.

We modeled our very framework of government based around and through and above all that exists from a position of  faith and righteousness and forgiveness and love. And look at us now, so lost.

As an individual, we make a crooked way straight only by our faith.  As an individual, we lift ourselves up not by dwelling on the past-- the regrets, the poor choices -- but only from looking forward with expectation of better days ahead.  If we were to sit with our sorrows, our mistakes, our guilt, and our missed opportunities of life -- we would never get ahead, never make progress -- for we would be plum stuck in the muck.

And as with a people, so goes a nation.

We can only grow and prosper when we live with the Spirit of God back of all living things, seen and unseen.  If we live and operate a nation in condemnation and regret and lack, we will only create a nation of condemnation, regret and lack.  Bada Bing Badda Boom. That's it.  No more, and all less. And above all else, this is not who we are.

If God is a God of love, which I truly believe It is, then there can be nothing else but.

Instead of a government revelling in a nation's self reliance, faith and convictions, what we have now is a government taking advantage of the lack thereof.   The federal government, which originally was limited in scope and power, has usurped all boundaries and regulation under our founding Constitution, while creating a world from fear, rather than faith.

Reacting in fear is a whole lot different than responding in faith.

It is from this position of fear and lack we set aside our common sense principles -- liberally compromising banking regulation for the benefit of housing entitlement programs. By escalating the growth of an artificial housing market through the sale of sub prime mortgages to people who in actuality could not qualify, and in turn spinning these loans off on wall street like a bag of weed, and in essence denying our actions when confronted by an officer, banks tumbled in the largest buzz kill ever imaginable. Combine bad loans with poor business practices, giving credit where credit isn't due -- and somehow expecting to profit from getting caught up in a dirty business to begin with -- what do you think would happen? 

Mixing greed with entitlements is never a good idea. We slipped.

It was then when the security of our money became a matter of question....banking, stocks, 401K's...all of it came under fire and further scrutiny, and all of them were suddenly a new dimension in fear based politics.  We had to bail them out; we had no choice; we would bankrupt the market and turn our country upside down.  So we bailed...and we slipped, again.

As growing unemployment and lack of available credit stymied our free marketplace, the drumbeat sounded again, and from fear our government convinced us that we cannot do it alone; the fed stepped in to "save and create jobs " they said...  The trust wasn't placed in the hands and minds of Americans to do what we do best, but the trust was placed in more bureaucracy to do it for us.  In actuality, a far cry from the "In God we Trust" placed on the most basic symbol of American liberty -- our money.  And we slipped, again.

And now faced with fears created from the political machine of Washington, even our health care is subject to a government take-over.   How can that be?  A system which safely and responsibly provides for 85% of the health care in America today is under fire through a conversation elevating what it doesn't do from a position of fear and lack -- while sabotaging any real chance of true reform-- the new legislation is hellbent on increasing the bureaucracy of a government who can't afford what it's already got.  And we find ourselves slipping...again.

Faith cannot operate and breathe freely in an atmosphere of fear.  In the exact opposite of experiencing true liberty, fear holds us back and keeps us from taking our rightful place in living a life of abundance and prosperity. 

But as a nation this is what we keep doing...we keep slipping.

Martin Luther King gives this:

"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness."

We keep slipping further and further away of living a life from integrity, faith, individual resolve and self-reliance the more we give way to a controlling, fear-mongering government. As they snuff our spirit right out from under us, we lose our sense of who we really are, forgetting who's really in control.

We have the control to dictate who we follow and why.  We can chose to see love or hate, good or evil in any moment of the day.  We can give our power to poor thoughts or attitudes of abundance -- we can fear nothing good will ever come or see a future of prosperity and goodness and might.  It is our choice.  It is within our power of what we give our attention to every day.

In Luke 13: 10-17 -- there is a story of the crippled woman healed on the Sabbath.  For eighteen years, she was "crippled by a spirit" and was bent over and could not straighten herself up.  Jesus, saw her and said "woman, you are set free from your infirmity."  Of course, as the story goes, the Synagogue ruler was indignant about Jesus working on a Sunday, and Jesus responded with :

"You hypocrites!  Doesn't each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water?  Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?"

Its not the working on a Sunday I want to focus on here, but the message reminding us of what holds us back -- wrong thinking holds us back -- Satan, evil, fear is what keeps us from progressing.  God has nothing to do with it.  God stands for health, wholeness, prosperity -- happy thoughts and words of faith.  It is by this way of faith we are most successful in life. We find a path of happiness to live out our days, breathing in the cold morning air to enliven our body, breathing in the Spirit of God to sustain us and keep us right on going on the right path and taking our rightful steps forward, not backwards.

In the spirit of progress, I wish conservatives could do a sweet take-over of the progressive movement and make our way in faith as the true believers that we are. America, by way of our founding fathers and by design, is all about progress and prosperity. And it is our nation's everlasting faith that guides us in the every day and stands firm as a beacon to the world --  wallowing in lack, condemnation and fear is just not part of the plan and gets us nowhere, alone, in the dark.

It's like this.  Here's a visual for you...the angel on the shoulder or the devil.  Who are we going to listen to?  Will we just bend over and give our attention to Satan, or any other fear based, disabling, immobilizing thought and live out our choices in the desert? Or will we let the sweet angel take the lead, nudging us ever so gently the way to the water -- the well --  and to the light?

The choice is ours -- and ours alone.  The Government has nothing to do with it. 

On this Sunday which I find my happiness, all of a sudden I am really thirsty.

Let Go and let God and go for a walk and
Make it a Good Day, G