The Stewart Report

Today in America so many are seeking easier ways to do things. There's a remote control for most every gadget; just about any meal can be prepared for us in inside six minutes; we don't even have to lick our own stamps -- they're already sticky when we buy them.
Yes, life is easier here in America today. But is "easy" really what we need? I don't think so.

In fact, I believe the "easier life" is one big problem with America today -- it's bringing us down as a nation.

But why is "easy" bad for America? Well, What happens to most anything that's not worked? It dries up, cracks up, breaks down, and eventually quits working. And what about our own bodies? Ever notice what they have to do for a person who is paralyzed or in a coma? A physical therapist actually exercises that person's body for them, because what is not worked in our bodies will waste away to nothing.

And that's what's happening to America today. Those Americans who went before us fought hard and sacrificed, scraping and scratching and fighting their way to the top of the hill. Then they stood at the top, proud of their diligence and determination, not knowing that only a few generations later, their children and grandchildren would sit like fat cats at the top of that hill, not willing to continue with that same level of diligence and determination.

Want a few examples? Here's one. Why can't we get the illegal aliens out of our country? Because they are willing to do the work we are too lazy to do ourselves. So, if we send all of our illegal aliens back where they came from, what will happen? Our crops will rot, our ditches won't be dug, many areas of life as we know it here will stop because we Americans refuse to do the hard, dirty work. So, the illegal aliens continue to stay. Write it down - we won't send them away.

Here's another one. Doctors are predicting that in less than 10 years the single most serious health problem we will have in our United States is obesity? Oh yeah, we're not always eating right, but it's not the greasy food that's making our kids fat - it's the laziness - too many video games, too much TV, and not enough sweat and hard work.

When I was a boy, a group of us kids found a beautiful monarch butterfly just coming out of its cocoon. As we watched, it fought and struggled to get out. It would become completely exhausted and stop struggling for long periods of time. Then it would begin to fight again to get out of the cocoon.

Finally, we kids were convinced the butterfly would never make it out, so we oh so carefully cut the cocoon open and the butterfly was free. And when it got out it was beautiful, but the beautiful butterfly never flew away and, finally, it just died.

What was wrong with it? Was it sickly? The next day at school in our science class we found out why that butterfly died - the desperate struggle to get out of that cocoon was part of its final development from a caterpillar to a butterfly. It had to fight and struggle to finally develop. And when we cut open that cocoon, thinking we were helping that beautiful butterfly, we were really killing it.

And today, we are killing America with our easy ways, our easy life.

Although there is some question as to the true author, some time ago a research study was done, based on the life span of our world's greatest nations. The conclusion of this study was determined as follows:

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been about 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From great courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependency;
And from dependency back to bondage."

And where are we in America today? smack dab in the middle of apathy, approaching a full fledged dependency, with bondage right around the corner.

So what should we be praying for? What am I praying for? Hardship, real honest-to-goodness hardship for our nation.

Oh, I don't want to see a terrible plague or a nuclear war, or great harm come to our children and grandchildren. But if our present hardship, or something even harder, doesn't lead us back to the mental and physical toughness our parents and grandparents had, soon we will find ourselves back in bondage.

So what should be our prayer? Pray not that things will be easy, but that we will have the strength, with God's help, to overcome any hardship and obstacles placed in our way. And with God's Help, our hardships will give us the strength we need to carry on as the greatest nation in the world.

May God Bless America

Jerry Stewart

P.S. email me with your own thoughts and ideas regarding our America at stewartreport@onemomentinamerica.com

JS