(3rd in a series of “Why I Love America”)
The Declaration of Independence ends with this pledge: “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.” I love America because of God’s providential favor on this land. The Lord promised, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance” (Psalm 33:12). America has never been a perfect nation. Yet God has shown remarkable providential care toward this country throughout its history.
Michael Medved, author and radio host, wrote an inspiring book titled The American Miracle: Divine Providence in the Rise of the Republic. He points to a series of remarkable events, from the landing of the Mayflower to today, that can’t be dismissed as luck or coincidence. “The most notable leaders of the past 400 years,” he writes, “have identified this good fortune as a reflection of Divine providence.”
Here’s an example. The Declaration of Independence launched the Revolutionary War, and George Washington was asked to lead America’s army against the most powerful military in the world. Washington later admitted to his aide Joseph Reed that he never would have accepted the command if he had known how undisciplined the army was, and how perilous his position would be.
Washington wrote, “Our only hope involves the necessary intervention of a higher power.” If America prevailed, he said, “I shall most religiously believe that the finger of Providence is in it, to blind the eyes of our enemies.”
Early in the war, Washington had nine thousand troops hopelessly trapped on Long Island, with twenty thousand British soldiers poised to attack just two miles away. His rag-tag Continental Army was pinned against the East River by the most powerful army in the world. It looked like they would be wiped out and the Revolution crushed, just four months into the fight.
The British plan was to sail two warships up the mile-wide river and cut off any retreat. But a fierce storm with near-hurricane winds suddenly arose and held the ships back, so General Howe decided to wait it out before attacking. Washington seized the moment. Under cover of darkness, he began ferrying his exhausted, divided troops across the treacherous water in small boats. He knew that when dawn broke, the British would see what he was doing and strike.
But at dawn the wind mysteriously died, and a fog so thick you couldn’t see six feet in front of you settled over the river. The water turned smooth as glass. Within a few hours every soldier was safely evacuated—one boatman reported making eleven trips through the darkness and fog. The strange thing was, there was no fog at all on the opposite shore. Not one man was lost. The Continental Army lived to fight another day, and they gave the credit to God.
Medved wrote that the army “benefited from a series of unusual natural phenomena and a pattern of illogical but consistent good luck that in the painful summer of 1776 rescued the troops from all but certain catastrophe.” The respected historian David McCullough put it this way: “Incredibly, yet again, circumstances, fate, luck, Providence, the hand of God, as would be said so often, intervened.”
One soldier who was there later wrote that “Providence favored us.” The night was still, the water was smooth, and at sunrise a great fog came up. The enemy did not discover the evacuation until the army was safely across. Don’t you wish more people today were that sensitive to God’s favor?
In his first inaugural address, on April 30, 1789, Washington again gave God the credit: “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”
God’s providence on our nation has been evident for nearly 250 years. In 1860 America was sharply divided over slavery—just as today we are deeply divided over abortion. Through a strange series of circumstances, the Republican Party chose Abraham Lincoln as their nominee. There were several candidates, and few expected Lincoln to emerge as the nominee. He had little formal education. He battled depression. He had lost numerous campaigns. Yet he sensed the call of God on his life and called himself “a humble instrument in the hands of the Heavenly Father.”
Medved reports that Lincoln agonized over whether and when to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. He asked God for a sign. He decided that if the Confederate army could be driven out of the North and Robert E. Lee defeated, that would be his answer. But the momentum wasn’t on the Union’s side.
Then it just so happened that a Union soldier resting in a field recently vacated by the Confederates noticed a small package in the trampled grass beside him. He reached over and picked it up: three cigars, wrapped in paper. When he looked closer at the wrapping, he saw it was covered with handwriting—the detailed battle plans of Robert E. Lee. Lincoln’s army had become the beneficiary of the greatest security leak in American history, and it turned the war in the Union’s favor.
That was Lincoln’s sign. When he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he announced, “God has decided this question in favor of the slaves.”
Charles Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary declared, “The first and most obvious consequence of the dreadful civil war just ended, has been the final and universal overthrow of slavery within the limits of the United States. This is one of the most momentous events in the history of the world. That it was the design of God to bring about this event cannot be doubted.”
You can write off the landing of the Mayflower, the victory in the Revolution, the outcome of the Civil War, the invasion of Normandy, and a hundred other events as mere coincidences. But our forefathers saw the hand of God and praised America as “this favored land.” Even Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and one of the most liberal judges in history, wrote in 1954, “I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses” (Time, February 15, 1954).
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance” (Psalm 33:12). I love America because, in His mercy, God has blessed and protected us.
