A) The righteousness that exalts a nation is expressed in a reverence for God. "Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people He chose for His inheritance" (Psalm 33:12).

B) The righteousness that exalts a nation is expressed in a respect for the Holy Scriptures. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path" (Psalm 119:105).

C) The righteousness that exalts a nation is expressed in obedience to both the commands and prohibitions of God. “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse- the blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known” (Deuteronomy 11:26-28).

D) The righteousness that exalts a nation is expressed in recognition of God’s ordained order for society.

• Individuals committed to God: We make Joshua's declaration of faith our own, "But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15).
• Foundational unit of marriage and family as established at creation. Jesus taught “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?" (Matthew 19:4,5). God defined marriage at Creation.
• Accountability to the Church of God.
• The state recognizing divine or natural law.
• A strong nation is made up of strong communities, which are made up of strong churches,  which are made up of strong marriages and families, which are made up of strong individuals.

Star Barn Raising Festival


For many years we passed a beautiful but decrepit barn on the highway to Harrisburg. The main barn, known as the Star Barn, was built in 1872, and is a five bay, Gothic Revival style frame building. It features an immense cupola atop a cross-gable roof. We recall the sign along the highway, "Help restore The Star Barn"


David Abel, a local businessman with a passion for historic barns, bought the barn and relocated it to his property which includes a growing complex of barns near Elizabethtown, PA. Today they will complete the barn-raising with the roof.
(Click on photo to enlarge)


It's an amazing scene to watch the many workers keeping very busy using manual labor and modern machinery in putting up Star Barn framing.
(Click on photo to enlarge)


This view shows how massive the cupola is.


As we approached the buildings many visitors were studying the various barn-raising scenes and taking it all in. David (L) is so enthusiastic about his and his wife Tierny's major undertaking of restoring the Star Barn to its former glory he almost beams with joy as he answers the many questions visitors ask him. We know David Abel through our association with Convene and have a great deal of admiration and appreciation for his big heart toward children. He and his wife Tierny together are parents of 17 children, many of them adopted. David is owner of DAS Companies, Inc. is a full service marketing and global supply chain portfolio company based in Palmyra, PA. and the co-founder of Brittany’s Hope Foundation, the philanthropic arm of DAS Companies. Brittany’s Hope aids in adoption and humanitarian efforts worldwide. We are friends with a family who have utilized their services in adopting a daughter from Vietnam.



Some of the Festival entertainment. These Civil War musicians took us back to a very critical period of our country's history. We sure hope we don't have to go through that again (see long note in "Finally today" section below).


This onsite vendor was interesting with his fully restored pickup truck turned into a classic ice cream truck. He was fully uniformed in his classic ice cream man attire, on a 90 degree afternoon, including a coin counter attached to his belt.


It's wheat harvest here in Lancaster County and last week we passed these wheat shocks near Paradise, PA.

Today's Suggested Music and Supplemental Resources

It is a time of divisiveness in America that has not been seen since the late 1960s. Colleges and universities are once again hot spots for radical ideologies; riots are springing up, and conservative speakers are shouted down; American ideals are despised by a small but vocal segment of the population, and the American flag, seen as the symbol of those values, is spurned by them; and the hostility between the right and the left is white hot.

We might not be as badly divided as the America that fought on battlefields in the Civil War, but that no longer seems like an impossibility.

When Pat Buchanan, addressing the Republican National Convention in 1992, famously labeled this divide as a "culture war," he was ridiculed by the mainstream media for being on the "fringe." Now, no one doubts the accuracy of his assessment.

At its most fundamental level, this is not a war about mere cultural values or even public policies such as abortion, sex, or marriage. At its heart, this is a war over the subject of God.

Is He real? Is He the God of the Bible? Did He create mankind? Does He care what we do? Do His commandments apply to us in America? Will we all one day stand before Him in judgment? Does God judge nations as well as individuals?

These are the questions behind the rancor. They are questions that had, with minimal dissent, been settled at the founding of our country. Even those founders who were not Christian knew our nation could not survive without God.

They believed God had His hand on those who fought the American Revolution and that God had granted us liberty. They knew the constitutional republic that they eventually established could not succeed without an educated and involved citizenry, whose lives were anchored by what George Washington called the "indispensible supports" of "religion and morality."

Even as late as 1956, our national leaders validated that foundation when Congress adopted our national motto: "In God We Trust."

While we are witnessing the disheartening results of forsaking the founders’ wisdom, many Christians refuse to let this terrible tragedy destroy our nation. In fact, for the last 40 years, AFA has continued to inform, equip, and activate God's people to stand boldly and firmly against secular humanist attacks on the founding principles of America.

That is no exaggeration. The progressive faction in this nation believes that there is no God and thus no absolute morality. They reject the ideas of the Declaration of Independence, which famously states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

For the secularist, man is the highest being on earth, and the governmental state is the highest authority. Humanists believe that society's elites should make the decisions that are important, and human rights are granted by the state – not God. The America they are building has a different motto: "In Man We Trust."

For four decades, AFA has fought against every inch of encroachment by the secular humanist progressive movement. From earlier clashes over violent, profane, and filthy television programming on the nation's networks, to current threats to the safety of women and children in the bathrooms of Target, AFA has understood that all these battles are skirmishes in the war over God.

As long as we are free to do so, we will continue to fight in this culture war with the cherished help of thousands of like-minded, God-fearing supporters, who fight side by side with us.

There is only One who can reunite this disintegrating nation, but that can only happen when the hearts of this people are united to His. That has been the only route – for individuals, communities, and countries – to true blessing and peace. For that goal AFA exists; toward that end AFA will continue to fight.