Our Cause It is Just
In familiar hymns and songs we often get used to singing first or favorite stanzas to the neglect of sometimes some great messages.
The last stanza of our National Anthem is a classic:
Oh thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved 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!
I love the phrase, “Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just….” Moments before David was killing the giant, Goliath he said, “Is there not a cause?” I Samuel 17:29.
As we celebrate our freedom this July 4th, we need to remember the Goliath of the world’s mightiest empire stood on our eastern shores and cried, “Give me a man, that we might fight together” (I Samuel 17:10). Indeed America gave the British true men, with which to combat. A portion of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn,” sung in dedication to the Concord Monument on April 19, 1836, reads:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard ‘round the world,
Spirit that made those dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid time and nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
Our cause was and still is just in America. Forerunners of American Independence were men like Oliver Cromwell when choosing men to lead in their fight against the king in the English revolution was questioned in regards to using common men to lead the fight. In August 1643, Cromwell said,
It may be it provokes some spirits to see such plain men made captains of horse. It had been well that men of honour and birth had entered into these employments, but why do they not appear? I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows than what you call a gentleman and is nothing else. I honour a gentleman that is so indeed. If you choose godly honest men to be captain of horse, honest men will follow them . . . A few honest men are better than numbers.
Goliath fell, to God’s glory, and for over two hundred years we have been a free people because “...our cause it is just.” May God help it to ever remain so.
-Pastor Pope-