“God Bless America” should be the national anthem of our country, someone (probably more than some one) has said. Certainly that phrase, God bless America, is a favorite of speakers striving for a surefire rousing signoff. What is it about those three words that stirs the heart and raises the temperature of red-blooded Amurricans?
Do the citizens of Uruguay, Burkina Faso, or Belgium, for example, exhort God to bless their countries? Do they imagine that God already has blessed their countries, and beseech Him to continue to do so? In their appeals to God, do they put in a word for a neighboring country, or maybe even a country far away but particularly in need of being blessed? Or is their wish only for God to bless theirs?
When God hears these requests, how does He judge which ones to grant? In parceling out blessings, does He favor the largest countries, or the ones with the most supplicants, or those with the most ardent or eloquent?
When we say “God bless America,” are we including South America? If just North America, do we include all 23 countries involved? To be precise, shouldn’t we say “God bless the United States of America”? And even then, are we including all the territories? Just where do the boundaries begin and end? And what about Americans who happen to be living elsewhere?
Thorny questions, all.
Surely, when we say “God Bless America,” we mean, God bless the idea of our country. For surely, the idea of America must be the apple of God’s eye.
And the song is catchy, too.
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