GOD BLESS AMERICA – A PRAYER

GOD BLESS AMERICA – A PRAYER
I returned only a few days ago from south India where I was engaged in missionary work and starting churches. India has over a billion people and will surpass China in a few years as our planets most populated country, only in a smaller geographic area. Everywhere was a sea of humanity, the worst traffic I have ever experienced and without a doubt poverty beyond hope in many areas. Cattle and water buffalo roamed the crowded city streets where people openly relieved themselves. The traffic snarled at every point because of no regulations except honk horns and hit brakes. More than 80,000 pedestrians a year are killed on the streets of India by cars, buses, scooters and even motorized rickshaws.
Grass huts and palm frond houses are squeezed into every village where half clad children squat in dirty streets. No satellite dishes, no central air units, no ice-cream trucks, only poverty of people. Ornate Hindu Temples contrast the backdrop of human suffering. The women adorned in colorful saree’s, the men in white Nehru. The drab Islamic Mosque with blaring speakers cry out five times daily for the devotee to pray. Statues of Budha are niched into certain areas where the religion found its genesis but moved north and eastward to more fertile oriental soil.
I sat on a crowded India Railway train with my mission partner, George Palmer, and looked out the stained window at the rice fields being seeded in the 105º temperature. India has nearly 40,000 miles of railroad that connect New Delhi, Calcutta, Hyderbad, Bombay, down to far south Madras. Every village and train station carried a similar scene of crowds waiting to board, multitudes of beggars and small baggage handlers carrying twice their weight over a thick turbans. This is India.
The people are beautiful, the children laugh, the caste system holds them firm in the grip of their social destiny. I thought of America, free, full and spoiled with luxuries of daily living. Our church steeples, McDonalds yellow arches, commercial bill boards, super highways and waving flags reminded me how blest we are. Truly, we have our problems and our differences but folk, America is the Greatest Nation on earth, no matter what the liberal critical Europeans label us. We are the envy of the earth. Our Wal-Mart’s and Quick Stops were a blessing to this country boy preacher from Oklahoma to see upon returning to America.
As I journeyed down I-240 toward Shawnee from Will Rogers Airport, I saw a huge flag unfurled over an automobile dealership. The red was bright, the blue was deep, the white stars were nearly pure in the bright June sun. . . this is the homeland. Truly we are blest. “One Nation Under God, Indivisible with Liberty and Justice For ALL.”
Many people in India found Jesus Christ while we ministered there in fulfillment of Matthew 28:18-20 “Go teach all nations …” and I found a new perspective of home sweet home. God Bless America … that is a prayer indeed.

Pastor and Chaplain
Larry D. Sparks