Out by the highway this week a big sign has appeared, advertising our town’s Fourth of July celebration. Of course, by the time I’m close enough to read anything smaller than “HISTORIC DOWNTOWN FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATION,” I’ve already passed it, so I can’t say with any authority what they’re actually going to do. 
We’re still in the throes of deciding what to do ourselves. The little kids have proposed to advance the colors, on bicycles, around and around the community college parking lot across the street from our house; it has also been suggested that we might attend the Red, White, and Bluegrass Festival in Morganton. Furthermore, we have friends in the country whose teenage sons, on any ordinary night, wait in ambush on the roof to lob firecrackers down at us — really, it’s more a welcome salute than an attack, and it makes my boys salivate to get on the roof and throw firecrackers, too. So, if that’s what happens on the seventeenth of April or the twenty-third of October, you can imagine that the Fourth of July at their house promises to be loud.
Meanwhile, I have to ask myself what accessories might be necessary to celebrate the Fourth of July as a religious-themed holiday, which of course you are free to do. Googling “religious Fourth of July” gave me listings for Tea Parties and pagan religious-rights rallies and patrio-religious MySpace layouts, and also this, the religious import of which I am still trying to discern.
These,on the other hand, are a little more self-evident, so to speak, though once you put them on, you’re stuck with them for the next 364 days, whether you feel patriotic as well as religious on those days or not. Or . . . vice . . . versa . . . I think.
Or you could opt for this fridge magnet — only a dollar! — if you wanted to affix something less permanent than a bumper sticker to a large metal object, than which nothing really says “United in Prayer” better, I always think.
And, I don’t know, say you’ve invited a bunch of biblical scholars to your party, and you want to make them feel right at home: wah la. Comes in red . . . yellow/orange/green . . . and blue.
This I suppose could be recycled for Pentecost next year, although I wouldn’t.
You know, you can put a cross in her hand; it’s been done.
Cranking the ratings machine, cranking the ratings machine. Oh, what will it say?[Rating: 34.8 out of 100]
Just think of it like a fortune cookie, all right?
You have a decision to make: double or nothing.
For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.
In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.
So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?
Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.
