Sheila Sims Iding
“While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free.
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer:
God bless america, land that I love…”
From the time you are little, July 4th is a special day…a holiday. It’s where the busy-ness of summer starts…and stops. It starts with gatherings at picnics and beaches and cottages with family and friends and friends and family. It stops with a day off work, a day away from the ball field and a pause to pray for the soldiers who give cause to this celebratory day. All across this great United States of America people are celebrating July 4th.
Not so much far across the sea. The 4th of July is just July 4th across the sea and it is just another day. But, ironically enough, it is from across the sea that I have learned a deeper appreciation for the celebration of July 4th and for the words “land of the free.”
Across the sea there is a country I am learning does not have the freedoms we celebrate every day. Yes…I knew this was true of some countries. Yes…I learned about communism growing up. But until it becomes part of your everyday life, it doesn’t seem as real. It doesn’t seem as restrictive. It doesn’t seem as “foreign”.
Until people you know and love are in a country where July 4th is just another day, you don’t realize that in that country across the sea, freedom is a foreign word…and even more foreign rite.
On July 4th I will be thinking of an underground church where you have to close all the curtains in an apartment just to say mass.
I will be thinking of teaching in a seminary but having to keep it a secret.
I will be thinking of the constant threat of governmental spies and wondering if that professor from the seminary really wants to meet for dinner to talk theology or is he the spy?
I will be thinking of packages sent to you that you never receive because they are taken by the government.
I will be thinking of prayers for renewed visas just to be allowed to continue your mission.
I will think of passports and mandatory reporting to the police station when you return to the country.
I will be thinking about communication and Internet restrictions and blogs and words monitored by government officials.
It’s almost cliché to say we take our freedoms for granted. It’s not cliché for me anymore. It is real world for me now.
My job is my passion and I have never had to keep it a secret.
I have questioned people’s intentions before, but I’ve never turned down a dinner invitation because they might be a spy.
I have never had to worry if a package full of gifts from family would be intercepted by the government.
I have prayed that I wouldn’t lose my passport but that was because of my own doing…not the government’s.
When I come home from a trip I give myself 24 hours to unpack but I don’t have 24-hour obligation to report to the police.
I can go on facebook anytime I want and sometimes wish the government could control my fb access.
When I write this blog, I worry about people’s opinions about my words but I am pretty sure the government won’t monitor a single syllable of anything I choose to write.
So soon I will freely post this blog on my legal fb account and begin to prepare for the 4th of July with family, prepare for a cookout and prepare for a celebration of our land of the free.
But, in the midst of the celebration, I will also pray for a missionary whose July 4th will just be another day of classes, carefully worded blogs, quiet prayers, hidden passion for his work and a private celebration of his homeland in his new land…far across the sea.