“I pledge allegiance to … what?”

Dad was gazing with obvious love and pride at our nation’s flag. I was staring at him with the same emotions. My mind can still look up at him through five-year-old eyes and beyond him the Stars and Stripes fluttering in the evening breeze. Sometimes I think my love of country is partially transferred love for my father and what he loved. Something caught rather than taught. It’s strange to reimagine the memory. It could have looked quite different.
 

History is simple when you’re a child, but Betsy Ross did not stitch the first U.S. flag. Our first official pennant as a newly founded nation was stitched together by soldiers at Fort Stanwix, New York on August 3rd, 1777. They gave up their shirts for the white stripes and stars; the officer’s wives gave up red flannel from their petticoats; and Captain Abraham Swartwout sacrificed his coat for the sea of blue. Congress paid Capt. Swartwout for his coat … our nation still has the receipt. The exact design of that flag is lost to history, but it probably resembled the Serapis Flag hastily constructed for John Paul Jones during the 1779 Battle of Flamborough Head. Similar designs were seriously considered for the U.S. flag.

 
If Prime Minister Pearson would have had his way, a strikingly different flag would be flying over Canada. It took the examination of almost 5,900 suggested designs and 308 speeches in the House of Commons to resolve the “Great Flag Debate.” Queen Elizabeth the Second proclaimed the current red and white maple leaf design on January 28, 1965. Had they chosen Pearson’s Pennant, the inaugural crowd still would have sung “O Canada” and “God Save the Queen.”
 
I am thankful to God for the land in which I was raised. The more I know of the world, the more humbled I am by the privilege of being raised with sufficient food, ample opportunity, abundant freedom and prevalent peace. But there is something healthy in realizing that our treasured symbols are changeable … ephemeral. So are the countries which they represent. Love your country, but fix your allegiance on something that cannot fail.
 
The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. Daniel 2:44
 
 
 

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