The windows rattle.
The floors shudder.
The heavens beckon you outside, calling you to look up.
Is it a bird?
Is it a plane?
No, it’s the F-16s!
It’s that time of year again when all of Singapore anticipates celebrating nationhood during their National Day Parade (NDP) and this year they celebrate their 60th year of independence (SG60). And at this time of the year, if you find yourself outside or near an open window late on Saturday afternoon, you will see, hear, and feel the roar of the F-16s, Chinooks, Apaches, Seahawks, and the C-130 Hercules while they all rehearse for our upcoming National Day events in August.
Is it exciting? Yes!
Is it breathtaking? Yes!
And yet, it gives me pause…
How does any nation provide security for its people? Is freedom a guarantee? Is nationhood a right?
And how does a nation manage the tensions of both providing for their own people while also ensuring that another power doesn’t threaten those same people? How to manage the competing values of security and individual freedom?
This is the question that nations have wrestled with through the ages, and no nation has completely “gotten it right.”
For me, it is a reminder to appreciate the freedoms I do have, both in my home and in my host country, and to remember that relying on force, whether horses or charioteers, or artillery or air force, cannot provide the security and stability that I seek.
So instead, I embrace these words of a poet of old:
“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures forever!”
and later in the Psalm 118 poem,
“Out of my distress I called on the Lord;
the Lord answered me and set me free.
The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.
What can man do to me?
The Lord is on my side as my helper”
and finally,
“It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.”
Where do you look for security and safety? How trustworthy is your source?
NDP 2025 (click to see a video of last Saturday’s rehearsal)
Thank you for this very timely and thought-provoking post. Though we long for security and freedom in this world, we are not guaranteed either, and that is hard for our human minds to accept. We can’t expect external earthly sources to ever provide us what we need. True security and freedom can only be found in Jesus, and our only longing should be for Him. We will never feel true peace until He is our only desire, or until we see Him face to Glorious Face.
Thank you again for your post, and for serving His Kingdom so well on this earth.
Thanks, Beth Ann, for interacting with our post. It is humbling and yet, enriching, being reminded that our earthly security and freedoms, aren’t able to ultimately provide what we genuinely need.