As America celebrates it’s “glorious fourth”–the 4th of July–this week I have three events that remind me of the basic human liberty this nation holds dear, and rightly so, even nearly sacred.

On Monday the United States Supreme Court handed down a ruling that affirmed the nation is still a land where religious freedom stands. In a case involving the mandated health care act commonly know as “Obamacare” the court ruled that religious organizations and other closely held private businesses did not have to comply with the clause in this act that mandates many forms of contraceptive aids be provided at no cost by an employer to its female workers. Faith based organizations objected to this law on religious grounds as a matter of conscience. The decision upholds a 1993 act of Congress called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

This Supreme Court decision affirms religious liberty at a time when those liberties are under attack from many quarters of society. Make no mistake this is a landmark decision. I am thankful that certain corporations filed this case to defend this essential constitutional freedom. Had the court ruled otherwise we would have a major setback for religious freedom.

The second event is a sad and tragic matter. It is the sight of busloads of immigrants, mostly small children, being blocked in the streets of a southern California town and forced to turn back. Residents of the town did not want hundreds of these Hispanic children suddenly thrust upon their community along with the social problems that inevitably follow. The flood of immigrant children being forced through America’s southwest border is a tragedy on many levels. Children from the Latin American countries have no place in their native home and are being cast upon America to feed, clothe and care for them. All of this without any fair process nor regard for the lives of the children. The state of these children is tragic and is an indictment of the failed policies of they native lands.

But here’s the point. They desperately desire to come to America. Why? Because of the opportunity this nation presents. In the case of small children it is the opportunity for better food, decent clothing and health care that will begin to heal their distressed and battered bodies. Remove the cynicism of the native land. They look north, across the border to America, and see freedom. Freedom from want. Freedom from poverty. Freedom from a dangerous, deprived and short lived existence.

America is seen as the place where every basic human need can be fulfilled. I tell people today they are still lining up to get into America and I see no one running to the door to get out. On this 4th of July let’s give thanks to God this is still the case.

My last scene is that of a small town in southwest Indiana called New Harmony. I traveled there this week to scout the sight for a Beyond Today program we’ll tape later this summer. This small town of less than a thousand inhabitants was originally founded in 1814 by a religious group called Harmonists who desired to create a community where they could practice their faith with religious freedom guaranteed. America offered the best environment where that could be done. It still does.

Where does America’s celebrated freedom come from? We rightly point to our Constitution and Bill of Rights which guarantee freedom of speech, religion and many other “inalienable rights”. For more than two hundred years these documents have been the foundation of a decent, fair and beneficent nation. America has defended its freedom and sought to extend it to others. Certainly the material blessings these freedoms provide have been enjoyed by many others through the nation’s short but powerful history. Today it is popular to downplay America as a great power–merely another nation among nations, nothing exceptional. But America is exceptional–and it is exceptional because God has made it so.

America’s freedom comes from God. America is not an accident of a great power owing its status to human power and ingenuity alone. America’s place in the world is due to the faithful promise and guiding hand of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God said to Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation”. God has fulfilled that promise in the modern world and America is a significant part of that great story of promise. To paraphrase the Apostle Paul we should “stand fast in the liberty by which Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again in the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1).

Paul writes of a spiritual liberty made possible in the Son of God. We stand today in a nation of great physical liberty and material prosperity made possible by the faithful guiding hand of the Great God. That God has been faithful to fulfill the physical side of His promises is a guarantee He will fulfill to all nations the spiritual dimension of his promise. We should never lose sight nor take for granted what God has given. Wherever you live please enjoy the meaning of the 4th of July with this background.

May God always bless America.