Small as a mayfly, yet looking toward the universe.
For the past several years, my husband, children and I have celebrated Independence Day in our own unique ways. We have watched fireworks, admired the beauty of this country, and enjoyed the day together.
This year feels a little different. As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, I find myself looking back but not only on the nation’s story which has been beautifully wild, but also on the unexpected ways it has become part of my own. This year also marks fifteen years since I became a resident of the United States.
Looking back, I can only say: glory be to God.
I was not born here. I arrived carrying another childhood, another culture, and another understanding of the world. Long before I arrived, my family came to the United States believing it offered the possibility of a better future. Like many families before us, we came with hope and a willingness to begin again.
Looking back now, I realize I was gradually learning how to grow within a world that already felt familiar to the people around me.
Anniversaries ask us to remember—not only where a nation has been, but where we have been. They remind us that history is never only something we read. Sometimes, without realizing it, it slowly become part of our own story.
Two hundred and fifty years is a long time. Long enough for a nation to remember victories and failures, courage and regret, promises fulfilled and promises still unfolding. Long enough to realize that no nation is built in a single generation. It is shaped, little by little, by ordinary people whose names history may never record.
Recently, I heard a lyric: “Small as a mayfly, yet looking toward the universe.”
I have not stopped thinking about those words. It made me wonder whether that is what every generation has done—mothers and children, farmers and teachers, soldiers and countless others, each in their own way.
Their lives were brief, yet they looked beyond themselves. There is something deeply inspiring about that. As a Christian, those words reminded me of a hope I already hold—that our lives, though brief, need not be small. Scripture teaches us to lift our eyes beyond what is seen and to live with eternity in view, trusting that even an ordinary life can become part of a story far greater than itself.
The more I have lived here, the more America has seemed to me less like a finished monument and more like an unfinished conversation. Each generation inherits a country it did not build, yet is invited to steward it for those it will never meet.
The song that gave me that lyric asks whether technology can make us more alive. Listening to it, I found myself asking a different question. As I listened, I found myself wondering about something else. What has carried people through the centuries?
I like to believe it has been hope, faith, and love. The willingness to plant trees whose shade they may never sit beneath. Perhaps every generation has done exactly that, whether they realized it or not.
As I reflected on that question, I realized my children already know America differently than I do.
They were born here. This is the country where they are growing up, where they are making memories I never had, and where they will one day tell stories that began long before they knew mine. Their story begins where mine began again.
When I first arrived, America represented possibility. Today, it also represents responsibility.
I am no longer only receiving from this country; I am helping shape the way my children will know it. Around our dinner table, in our morning prayers, through the neighbors we love, the work we do, and the way we care for those around us, we we contribute our own small chapter to a much longer story.
Two hundred and fifty years is a long story. Yet it is still unfinished. One day, my children will add their own pages to it.
My prayer is not that they would inherit a perfect nation, because no nation has ever been perfect. My prayer is that they would love what is good, work to mend what is broken, and never lose the courage to look beyond what they immediately see.
Like the mayfly looking toward the universe, our lives are brief. Yet I believe my God, who has placed eternity in the human heart, invites us to lift our eyes beyond ourselves and to live faithfully within the generation we have been given.
To receive what others have entrusted to us with gratitude. To leave it a little better than we found it. To remember that history is not only written by those whose names fill textbooks, but also by ordinary people like myself.
When my children one day look back on the country they inherited, I hope they will remember more than the headlines of our time. I hope they will remember the conversations around our table, the prayers we offered together, the neighbors we loved, and and that each of us is given the opportunity to carry the story we inherit and leave it better than we found it.
Our lives are small. Like the mayfly, they pass quickly. Yet, in God’s hands, even a brief life is enough.
