God's Love Letter for America

The Bible is full of love letters from God – letters we especially need when we are in times of tribulation. From the very first verse in Isaiah 40, we discover this love: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.” This word comfort is not just a sense of being at ease, but to show us that God’s great character of love towards His people.

Moving to verse 2 we discover the phrase, “speak ye comfortably [a message of love] to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished; that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”

Mike Spradlin
Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary & Live by the Word Ministries

God is always interested in external and internal peace in His people. That’s why He provides a way to make a way for our rescue from conflict (see Isaiah 40:3-5). God said that He was going to prepare a highway out of the wilderness. We can’t do it. We have enough trouble just finding the highway! This great feat requires God ─ only He can level a mountain and raise a valley. And a hero stepped up to accomplish this monumental task. His name was Jesus.

A Prayer for Our Nation?

On November 11, 1938, Americans were observing the end of one world war in the shadow of another. It was Armistice Day (now celebrated as Veteran’s Day), and 1938 marked exactly two decades after the cease-fire ending World War I.

While it seemed as if the lights had gone out on the other side of the ocean as Europe fell under the darkest totalitarianism the world had yet seen in the Third Reich, a song, penned by a Jewish-American composer, sent a beacon of hope and determination through the angry storm clouds of approaching war.

Richard Land
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

Decades earlier, Irving Berlin had written the song as patriotic entertainment for a military revue. When entertainer Kate Smith approached him with her plans for an anniversary broadcast on her weekly radio program, however, he thoroughly revised the lyrics with serious, prayerful intent. Through the power of radio, “God Bless America” became an instant success.

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