In fifty years of teaching music to students of varying ages, the students I am most concerned about are our young people, those who are still in our elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, those who look to their elders for guidance, love, wisdom, and truth. What role models are they seeing when our families are not as strong as they used to be because parents are so caught up in the materialism of our secular world that the children go by the wayside? If our children do not get the love they need at home, they will seek it in other places and with other harmful things such as drugs and alcohol. What values are our children learning when elected officials lie, are corrupt, feel they are above the law, and been given permission by the Supreme Court to become dictators at all levels? I am in my golden years, but I do know that morality and values matter, faith in God matters, our Constitution and Bill of Rights matter, and most of all, people matter, we matter!
Our nation has been grieving since election day in November. After being promised so much by an untrustworthy man, we have no where to go with our love, our grief. There are those who want to change the American landscape by usurping our rights, by threatening revenge and retaliation against anyone who thinks and speaks differently than they do, or by ridding America of all of its illegal immigrants, including those who are “citizen-born dreamers.” Instead of letting fear and doubt destroy America, we, the people, need to use our love, courage, hope, integrity, peace, and grace to pull up our sleeves and do the work necessary to keep America a democracy. We need to stand up and let our lights shine into the darkness of our deeply divided nation.
One former president, Ronald Reagan, declared what we needed to do. He already knew in 1964 and 1967 that America was given much, but to those who are given much, much is expected. Everything we have been given needs to be reclaimed and renewed so that our children will have a beautiful world to grow up in, not a destroyed planet. It should be a warning to all Americans that we have not changed very much since the 1960’s. In his “You and I Have a Rendezvous Speech,” Reagan said the following: “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.” In his “Freedom Is Never More speech,” Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
It is true that the Vietnam War ripped a big hole in our hearts as hawks and doves fought to maintain power, much like today, but there is an insidious evil growing in our society. I may be wrong, but there are very few people willing to say, “No,” to Satan. That one fact could destroy all of us and what we love. I strongly feel that America has lost its way, and we are no longer a Christian nation. When we let go of our possessions and place our lives into God’s hands, our future will be brighter. We all must heed the tolling of the old country church’s steeple bell for it is Christ who is calling us home. It is not too late to put Christ first in our hearts; He alone lights the paths He wants us to follow. When we sing “Joy to the World” on Christmas Eve, I pray that joy will come in the morning when we center our lives in the Christ child. I close with these verses from Philippians 1: 9-11 (KJV): “And I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may by sincere and without offence till the day of Christ; Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.” And may the Lord and Giver of Life protect and defend our children so that they, too, may praise the Lord God, Almighty.
Anna Hartt
