The Flag

On my front porch flies the flag that I have loved since I can remember. Any toy was made cooler with the stars and stripes, and I can remember sitting at the kitchen table desperately trying to make a flag using one of those pens that had red, blue, green and black ink. I'd get the number of strips wrong, or struggle to get the stars to be even. Eventually I'd declare it close enough and tape it to a purple Tinkertoy (those were the long ones) stick and run around the house.

As I got older, I learned why I should loved the flag. Our nation has a wonderful history of freedom, unique among the nations of man. Throughout our history we have marched, sometimes slowly, sometimes in great violent lurches, to a more perfect destination. We can always see it, a little further off, just yonder slightly over the horizon. We keep going.

My brothers and sisters here in America won't let me deviate too much from the path. When we falter America has a conscience, brave men and women who will cry forbearance, to remind us of our better selves, to remind us that Providence pays mind to our deeds, that we must not judge ourselves by others, but by an unchanging standard. We squabble, we fight, we come to blows, but eyes blackened and spirits wounded we return to formation, our course corrected and we continue to that place just yonder slightly over the horizon.

The flag, unlike the flag of criminal nations of dark memory does not stand for race or soil. Americans are of many tribes, and while a man may become an American by fortune of birth, he is not one because of the ground he might till or tread.

All who claim the Jesus as Lord are my brethren, and by what we believe we are united. Unique among the nations of men, American are united by what we believe, by our faith not in land or family, but in an ideal. All who claim that these truths are self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are my brethren too.

As much as a nation with a place on the globe can be, America is not a place on the globe. As much as a territory can be not a territory of dirt and longitude, we are a territory of mind and heart. Any man can be an American, if not in fact or place certainly in spirit.

Almost every morning I pass our flag, and I find myself sheepishly compelled to touch my brow, or to pause and look at least for a moment. Our fathers happened upon an ideal, that a nation of laws would be equipped to reflect, to resist and overcome our shadowy impulses, to be better tomorrow. For all it stands for, I love the flag.

Tim McNabb