By John C. Oster, Host of Heritage Home
The Vision that
Created America
(The Washington Monument is seen above between the bars of the Old Post Office Tower in Washington, D.C.)
Did you ever take a good look at a one dollar bill? It includes what appears to be the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. with George Washington's eye imposed upon it. The symbolism is no accident. George Washington, was a man of great vision as were the other founders of the republic. They carved a nation out of a wilderness continent and built a foundation that stands today.
George Washington faces the future as a young surveyor at the age of 19. The face of a young Washington was scientifically recreated by forensic scientists at Mt. Vernon.
They stood in the mud and created a great city with broad boulevards and towering monuments from what they saw through the vision of the inner eye.
This relief sculpture of our first presidents looks out over Alexandria, VA, from the Masonic George Washington memorial on King Street just up the hill from our hotel.
That inner vision is essential to human progress. What essentially is the vision of America? That is what Heritage Home set out to discover while in the east for a family wedding.
We visited Valley Forge, Mt. Vernon, the national capitol, the Gettysburg Battlefield and the National Cathederal in search of the National Vision. What we discovered is what we will be presenting in this space.
I am standing in the doorway of an exact reproduction of one of more than 2,000 log quarters for soldiers at Valley Forge where the army during a long and bitterly cold winter practiced and perfected the military skills needed for a successful conclusion to the Revolutionary War. Whether they individually knew it or not they were part of launching the vision of America.
There can be no doubt but that the founders of America were men and women of vision. Proverbs 29:18 reminds us that "without vision the people perish."
Near this spot in Gettysburg National Cemetery and Battlefield where thousands died to preserve the union President Abraham Lincoln reminded us of our national vision with these immortal words, "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
Vision in this context is not seeing what is presently there but seeing what will someday be there as a result of what God helps us do to make it happen.
A vision is not a dream. One could well dream of going over Niagara Falls on water skis, but we should probably not try to make it happen.
The National Cathederal, over 100 years in the making, now towers above the capitol city with its reminder of eternal values in the secular city.
Our task is to call upon God to give us a vision to build a Christian future for America and then set about the task of building the vision.
As Lincoln also said at Gettysburg, "It is rather for us the living to be here rededicated to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, and that nation of the people, for the people and by the people shall not perish from the earth."
Visions are God-given. Ask God for yours.
