Fireworks!

I love fireworks! Watching the rockets soar into the night sky and paint a cascade of colorful sparks takes me back to my childhood in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When I was a kid, we would buy a small package of fireworks (fountains and sparklers). After a great cookout at my grandparents, we would wait until dark and then, using my grandfather’s blowtorch, my father and grandfather would light the fireworks. After a couple of fountains, one of them would light a sparkler and hand it to my sister and I. We would wave it around for the ten to twenty seconds it would last and then drop the piece of wire that is left at the end of a sparkler. After we finished up our fireworks, we would pile in the car and go park on a street outside the University of New Mexico football stadium to watch the city fireworks display.

What a great time we had on the 4th of July! We would gather with family and friends to eat, laugh and enjoy the day. Since then, fireworks have evidently become much more dangerous (or people have become much more stupid) because fireworks are illegal in many places. Now my family lives spread out across the country and our friends have spread out as well. So this year, as in the past decade, I will not experience my childhood again.

This year, as I park on a street outside a fireworks display (some things don’t change), I will celebrate the great life that God has given me. I will relish being with my wife and daughters. I will thoroughly enjoy the people that we are with and I might even “ooh” and “ah” as the fireworks paint the canvas of the sky. I can do all of this for one reason…God has blessed America. He has given us prosperity and freedom. He has allowed the U.S. to be a leader in the world. God has blessed America.

This year as each rocket rises to explode beauty across the sky, I will be sending this prayer with it. “Dear Lord, thank You for allowing me to live in this great country. Thank you for Your blessing on my life and on the USA. Just as this single rocket explodes to share the beautiful light to everyone in the vicinity, let my life pour out on those around me, sharing with them Your beauty and Your light. Lord, let me be Your blessing for America.”