Choir Notes

Standing for Freedom
From Music and the Spoken Word
Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell • Program 3750

One of the disappointing facts of life is that things keep breaking. Furniture, dishes, and computers all break. Bones, health, and hearts can break. Laws and promises, contracts and treaties can be broken.

If the blessing of freedom is taken for granted, it could wind up being broken. Freedom’s been bought with a price from those “who more than self their country loved.”1 The Founding Fathers knew that the sacred rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would be shattered unless safeguarded by each generation.

How do we keep freedom from breaking? We stand for what’s good and honest and true. As one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence proclaimed, “Without virtue there can be no liberty.”2 People standing for freedom will nobly bear the responsibility of maintaining liberty.

Even the smallest and most ordinary person can stand for great things. People are like flagpoles. Some flagpoles are very tall and prominent, while others are small. But the glory of a flagpole is not in its size but in the colors it flies. An insignificant flagpole flying the right colors is far more valuable than a very tall one with no flag at all.

Through the efforts of those standing for something noble and true, liberty will be preserved intact and unbroken.

1 Katherine Lee Bates, “America the Beautiful,” Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, no. 338.

2 Benjamin Rush, “Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic,” from A Plan for the Establishment of Public Schools and the Diffusion of Knowledge in Pennsylvania; to Which are Added, Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, (address to the legislature and citizens of the state [Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1786]), epilogue.