This week we celebrate our nation’s 242nd birthday. Few have argued with the fact that 1776 was a year of many miraculous occurrences for the American Continental Army. This ill-equipped and ragtag unit of volunteers was a laughable foe to the most powerful military force in the world, the British Empire. Yet time after time Washington and his army were spared from annihilation by unaccountable changes in weather or other unusual turns of events.
On July 3, 1775, Virginian George Washington arrived from the capital, Philadelphia, to take command of those courageous but undisciplined forces who had come together under that grand-sounding title “Continental Army.” He worried over their vulnerability to British attack, and in one of his discouraged moments, told his aide, Joseph Reed, that he never would have accepted that command had he been more aware of the perilous position they were in. His only hope, he told Reed, involved the necessary intervention of God. “If I shall be able rise superior to these, and many other difficulties which might be enumerated, I shall most religiously believe that the finger of Providence is in it, to blind the eyes of our enemies,” he wrote.
Once again in this present time, America needs the intervention of the Divine Providence of God to bring her back to her moorings, and her foundation based on the principles of the Word of God.