Sunday Blessings-faith of our fathers

The Elders were over for our July 4th celebration and challenged us to ponder and study about faith to increase our faith.  My thoughts immediately went to the faith of our founding fathers and those who were good men and women seeking to find truth and looking to God for answers.  They prayed to God and asked for His help in their quest for independence.  I am humbled and grateful for their faith and diligence.  It's interesting that the Bible Dictionary says that "faith is a principle of action and power..."  and "true faith always moves its possessor to some kind of physical and mental action."  The founding fathers are truly a great example of this.  I hope to teach my grandchildren that the reasons we celebrate with all the fireworks, parades and fanfare is to honor the courage and faith of our nation's first leaders and to celebrate the victory that would not have been possible without divine help.

In a great talk called God's Hand in the Founding of America, given in 1976 by L. Tom Perry, he says,

The success of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War came about through men who were raised up by God for this special purpose. You must read the Declaration of Independence to feel its inspiration. You merely need to study history to recognize that a group of fledgling colonies defeating the world’s most powerful nation stemmed from a force greater than man. Where else in the world do we find a group of men together in one place at one time who possessed greater capacity and wisdom than the founding fathers—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and others? But it was not to their own abilities that they gave the credit. They acknowledged Almighty God and were certain of the impossibility of their success without his help. Benjamin Franklin made an appeal for daily prayers in the Constitutional Convention. In that appeal he said, “If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? I believe without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the building of Babel.” (Mark E. Petersen, The Great Prologue, Deseret Book Co., 1975, p. 88.)