I write this on the eve of the 250th anniversary of our great nation, and I have delighted to see so many people taking time to honor and celebrate the occasion. Everywhere I drive, every store I walk in—everyone has been “America-maxing” all week.
And really, it’s pretty much been going on all summer because of the World Cup coming to the good old U.S. of A. And it’s not just the tournament. It’s the countless international fans who have been swarming the country to watch their national teams play. These good people have been documenting on social media their reveling in Americana. From Buc-ee’s to Taco Bell to free refills, people from the world over are America-maxing with us. They are sharing over and over, “If you want to hate America, watch the news. If you want to love America, drive across it.” It’s enough to stir patriotism even in the most cynical among us.
@whitehouseIf you want to hate the U.S. listen to the media, if you want to love the U.S. experience it 🇺🇸♬ original sound – The White House
It’s even enough to get a guy like me—an American football fan who can’t stand soccer—to actually watch matches and cheer for our boys in red, white, and blue. I don’t know what’s happening half the time, but I’m still watching and cheering from my easy chair as if it’s LSU vs. Alabama in November. What do I care about soccer? Not much. But you wouldn’t know it from my patriotic fandom this past week. “Country Road, Take Me Home” anyone?
‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ plays in San Francisco Bay Area Stadium after the @USMNT Knockout Stage victory 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/tBtFoqh0xC
— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) July 2, 2026
Our family has our plans for tomorrow. My wife will make a special holiday breakfast. I will be cooking up meat on the grill for lunch. Then tomorrow night we’ll gather for an annual event that our church puts on at a home with a lot of property out in the country. Everyone will dress in their campiest patriotic best. The kids will swim and play games. We’ll have some contests for everyone. We’ll eat a bunch of food in the shade until it gets dark enough to send up the fireworks. We’ll be thankful that we got to be together, and we’ll celebrate the country we love so much for Jesus’ sake.
In the movie The Sandlot, there is a great scene set on July 4, 1962. A group of boys play baseball all summer at the dusty old sandlot, but Independence Day is their one opportunity to play under the lights (i.e., the fireworks). So the boys load up on food at the block party and then race to the sandlot in time to play under the lights like the big leaguers. As the field lights up and the game starts, Ray Charles is singing “America the Beautiful,” and the boys can only play momentarily before all of their attention is carried away from baseball to the lights above. It’s one of the most beautiful scenes in all of film (see below).
I watched that scene again a little earlier tonight, and I couldn’t help but wonder—and maybe even worry a little—that rising generations may not even be able to recognize the greatness that the scene represents and evokes. Even though the boys are unaware, the song playing over their lives says “God shed His grace on Thee.” Do kids today understand that? Does this generation cherish the providential blessing that is America and the ideals she was founded upon? It is hard to tell sometimes.
My hope and prayer are that cynicism and moral dissolution do not win in the end within our nation. There seems to be a lot of that going around, and they are a poison to a people—especially a nation that was birthed as an idea. And not just any idea, but a conviction that all men created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Those statements from the Declaration are moral claims deeply rooted in the Christian tradition. If we lose that, we lose everything.
But it’s not lost yet, and I’m not giving up on America. I’m going to pray for us to be a nation that rises up and lives out “the true meaning of its creed ” and for God to shed His grace on us for another 250 years. That’s what I will pray when we play under the lights tomorrow night. I hope you will too.
During World War 2, Allied forces identified overtrained German spies by testing to see if they knew the last verse of the National Anthem. If they knew it, you knew they were a spy because almost no authentic American even knows there is a last verse. Which is too bad, because the last may be the best, and I leave you with it:
O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
