A patient looks you in the eye and says her last meal was roots she dug from the ground, boiled in water, and shared just to make it through the week. That single sentence can wreck your categories for poverty, health, and gratitude, and it becomes the doorway to a bigger July 4th reflection from me, a country doctor who has seen both mission-field scarcity and American abundance.

I tell stories from Haiti that still stick with me: barefoot patients with infections, women going days without food, and a Bible conference where people sit on concrete blocks in 95 degree heat for eight hours a day just to hear Scripture taught. I ask what that kind of hunger reveals about our own spiritual appetite, and I connect it to the biblical warning about a famine of hearing God’s word. Along the way, I share my parents’ early marriage, empty cupboards, and the long grind through college and medical school as a reminder that America can still be the land of opportunity.

Then we pivot to civic responsibility and religious freedom. I compare our First Amendment rights with what believers face in places like India, where Christians may have to worship and baptise in secret, and I talk plainly about voting, apathy, and why a representative government ends up resembling the governed. If faith matters, freedom matters, and your neighbour matters, then showing up is not optional.

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