Freedom's Blessing
by Darko Velichkovski
July 7, 2005
(AgapePress) - Twenty years ago, pursuing a dream of academic excellence and artistic mastery, I left my homeland in communist Eastern Europe and arrived in the U.S. wide-eyed and anxious. What I found was immeasurably greater than all my dreams combined. I found American freedoms, the most precious one of which I didn't even know one needed -- the freedom to know and worship God.
For, where I came from, the spiritually lethal mixture of humanism and socialism in our upbringing and education rendered God irrelevant. By the time the Party's educational arm was through with us, atheism had set so deeply in our minds that it became the only acceptable and logical view of the world.
Led by my government, my teachers, even by my parents, I walked the wide path to the dark gates of eternal separation from my Maker. In just my lifetime, I have seen whole generations utterly lost to the deadly toxins of atheism, when the knowledge of the Creator became a heavily guarded intellectual commodity. I have seen my once proud and prosperous, centuries-old Christian nation lose the freedom of the knowledge of the Divine, disintegrate and lower itself into the chaos of one of the most violent civil wars in European history. Blood flowed like rivers, human life became cheaper than candy, and hope was nowhere to be found. For, ultimately, that's what humanity is, void of the knowledge of God -- hopeless and self-destructive.
How blessed are we, living here in this land of freedoms. Because of the divinely inspired wisdom and faithfulness of the founding fathers we are still surrounded by the freely imparted knowledge of the Almighty Creator of the universe, who in His love for us came to earth as a humble man in Galilee, and gave up His life for you and for me. Indeed, as that old song says, "America, America, God shed His grace on thee." Let us never take it for granted.
Additional Essays:
Freedom's Gift
Freedom's Promise
Freedom's Requirements
Freedom's Cost
Freedom's Foundation
Freedom's Courage
(these links will be activated as the essays are posted)
Darko Velichkovski is president and CEO of the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra in Jackson, Mississippi. He is a classically-trained clarinetist and Christian recording artist and producer. This essay appeared in the July 2005 issue of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association.
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