No doubt patriotic songs were

sung in many churches all over America this past weekend. Where I worshipped

we began with "America the Beautiful" as a congregational hymn.

Then Misty Smith, from New Hope Church in Fayetteville who is serving

as interim minister of music for First Baptist Church in Gay, stood before

the small crowd to sing "The Star Spangled Banner." Never have

I heard a more beautiful and heartfelt rendition of our national anthem.

What a voice!

We need to sing our songs now.

We need to worship, to offer praise and to pray. We always have needed

to do these things. But the complacency, comfort and prosperity of other

times take our thoughts in other directions, don't they?

Need is the key here, isn't

it? When we need God, we cry out to Him. When we think we don't need Him,

we live unto ourselves, independent and mindless of a loving, caring,

all knowing Heavenly Father who desires an ongoing everyday relationship

with us.

How many friends, family members,

acquaintances are there about whom you may have said, "here comes

____, they must want something," because that seems to be the only

time you hear from these individuals. We all know or have known somebody

like that. We all know how it feels to be used and then forgotten.

Such thoughts remind me of

the column I wrote a few months back about Amazing Grace. This may be

an appropriate time to recall once more the truly amazing grace God bestows

upon us all in spite of our haphazard, convenient walk with Him.

I'm sure many of you, along

with me, have watched your television screens in recent weeks as great

numbers of our young soldiers attended worship services in makeshift tents

in the desert of Kuwait. Chaplains on the scene attempted to minister

to the hearts and souls of men and women of all ages, all races, all religions

who were staring long and hard in the face of death, and what some might

now consider fates worse than death.

It's not just the young who

ask what is the meaning of grace. We are afforded the opportunity all

throughout their lives to inquire, to wonder about, to ask about, to get

acquainted with grace.

In recent days, American soldiers

have been beaten, abused and paraded before cameras in a land where they

are hated. They have been laughed at, mocked, and scorned in ways that

only one human among us could ever possibly identify with. That human,

God's son in the form and presence of the Holy Spirit, lives today and

moves among us here in this land just He lives and moves among those in

the desert of Iraq.

Christ came. Christ lived.

Christ died a brutal and painful death. He understands. And He stands

with those and for those who call on and lean on Him. In life and death

all that Christ was and is is real and it's enough. He sees to it that

it's enough as only he can.

You see, Christ also died a

lonely death. Even His Father turned his back and there was no Holy Spirit

to comfort Him there at the last. No one to whisper peace and offer a

promise of tomorrow. No grace to make it all more bearable. God's Grace

in human form had to go to His cross without the comfort of the grace

He so generously exhibited to others throughout His life while on earth.

And He did it willingly so

that that we here in America and those in other places and in other lands,

can know that God's Amazing Grace is sufficient and that it will sustain

any and all in the most trying of times. Because of that grace no one

dies alone anymore, unless they choose to do so.

To doubt that the Amazing Grace

of which we sing is enough for you and me as we go about the business

of our lives, and for every American that follows the flag of this nation

where ever it may take them, is to doubt all that Christianity ever stood

for, or ever will stand for.

I choose not to doubt the workings

of the Holy Spirit and the myriad of ways in which God's Grace can sustain

us in life and in death.

A convenient faith doesn't

cut it just now, does it? Indeed, we all have choices to make every day,

don't we?

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