My husband and I have a favorite movie that probably seems odd, since it was made before even our parents were born – “Holiday Inn” with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. (Awesome movie I highly recommend!) In the movie the main characters are tired of working every day plus holidays in “show business,” so one decides to open “Holiday Inn” – a venue that will only be open on holidays. This song is from the July 4th show:
Freedom, freedom
That’s my song for today
Listen to this American troubador from the U.S.A.
I’m singing a song of freedom
For all people who cry out to be free
Free to sail the seven seas
Free to worship as we please
If the birds up in the trees can be free
Why can’t we?
I’m bringing a song of freedom
To all people wherever they may be
Free to speak and free to hear
Free from want and free from fear
Sons of freedom far and near who agree
Sing with me
That all God’s children shall be free
[By Irving Berlin for “Holiday Inn” (1942)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4841GZL5AhA]
I think we can agree that freedom isn’t free. Our Founding Fathers and their generation fought a long and bloody battle with England in order to gain independence. Eighty years later an even more bloody battle was fought that, in part, ended in the freeing of slaves. Eighty years later there was a second “world war” to free people from tyrants like Hitler and Mussolini. And the fight for freedom continues around the world today in different places and different ways. I don’t believe that the human condition is such that anyone can say they want to be a slave to someone else. So, the quest for freedom in its many forms goes on.
I guess that part of my prayer today comes right from that song:
Free to speak and free to hear
That all God’s children shall be free
Those whom the Son has set free are free indeed. May all your children be free. Lord Christ, may it be so. Amen.