It’s one of my favorite family stories, one I especially like to
remember and share with my daughter as we approach the Fourth of July.
It was April 1954. My mother, a German immigrant to America, had boarded the MS Stockholm.
The passage across the Atlantic Ocean was a stormy one, so to distract
herself, my mother thought about the fact that, in just a short time,
she would arrive in America—the land of her dreams.
In the final hour of the voyage, my mother was abruptly awakened at 5
a.m. by a pounding on the door of her tiny, windowless cabin deep in the
bowels of the ship. Opening the door, my mother and her cabin mate
found a member of the crew.
“Come up on deck,” he said, smiling. “There’s something you’re going to
want to see.” So my mother, along with dozens of other excited
passengers, threw on their coats and made their way up to the deck.
There, rising up in the dawn light, was the Statue of Liberty. It was
one of the most exciting—and emotional—moments of my mother’s life. To
her, the statue WAS America, the bright hope of the world for millions
of immigrants like her.
I tell this story in my new book, “If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten
Promise of American Liberty.” And I tell another story, as well—one that
took place forty-eight years after my mother’s arrival. It’s the story
of what it was like to live in New York on September 11, 2001 and during
the harrowing days and weeks after the attacks.
Just a few months after 9-11, I was standing on the upper deck of a
ferry headed from Manhattan to New Jersey. As we passed through New York
Harbor, I suddenly saw Lady Liberty, almost as if I were seeing her for
the first time. I surprised myself by getting choked up. And I suddenly
realized the reason I had tears in my eyes was that, after all that had
happened, she was still standing there, still graciously welcoming
poor, huddled masses, still holding forth her torch to light the way to
liberty and hope. It just broke my heart.
I began thinking of some of the noblest Americans who ever lived—people
who stood up—sometimes at the cost of their lives—to honor the American
ideal: Nathan Hale, Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, those first responders
on 9-11. They knew what America was about—or SHOULD be about. They
worked and sacrificed for the America that God intended us to be.
Independence Day is a day on which we should ask ourselves: How am I
upholding the promise of America—the promise Lady Liberty represents?
Let me put it this way: When people try to destroy it, not just with
planes plowing into buildings, but with evil laws that rip America apart
at the seams, do you fight them?
If you see something wrong, do you try to right it? Do you vote? Do you
join volunteer societies—or begin one? Do you pray for our country and
its leaders? Do you work on behalf of candidates you believe in—or have
you even considered running for office yourself?
I’d like to end this by quoting the last paragraph in my book, If You Can Keep It:
“So go forth and love America, knowing that if your love is true it
will be transmuted one way or another into a love of everything that is
good beyond America, which is her golden promise to the world, and the
promise that we, you and I, must keep.”
I’m hoping you have a wonderful Fourth of July, and may God bless America.
Eric Metaxas is a co-host of BreakPoint Radio and a best-selling author whose biographies, children's books, and popular apologetics have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
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