Dear friend,

On February 12, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, my husband and I traditionally enjoy watching a movie based on his life. This year we watched Lincoln; a movie based on a book entitled Team of Rivals. While watching the movie I couldn’t help but observe how the hand of God was with Mr. Lincoln during his Presidency and most likely all through his life. Considering the incredible events that Mr. Lincoln endured, not only personally but also professionally and the many choices he enforced, made him popular with some people and unpopular with others. How else could he have coped if it wasn’t for the hand of God? One decision he made was so unpopular to one man in particular that his life was tragically snuffed out a few months after the 13^th Amendment, the Abolition of Slavery, was passed by Congress.

Mr. Lincoln was a self-educated man who was also genuinely humble with a wonderful sense of humor and a very strong faith in God. His presidency was steeped in a war that took the lives of 620,000 soldiers. Mr. Lincoln was bent on doing what God wanted him to do, honoring human live and abolishing slavery.

Thank you, God, for putting your hand on Mr. Lincoln; for giving him the courage, strength and wisdom to make the difficult decisions he needed to make and to push for the passing of the 13th Amendment.

In honor of Mr. Lincoln, I have inserted below what has been called his greatest speech, a speech that according to a book review on Goodreads ‘is both an important historical document and a thoughtful analysis of Lincoln’s moral and rhetorical genius.’

Second Inaugural Address

Author: Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address March 4, 1865 Fellow Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war–seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One eighth of the whole population was colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

***************************************************************************************************************

Mr. Lincoln was a great reader of the Bible and during my research on Mr. Lincoln, I found this interesting article from Today in the Word, April, 1989, page 12

Joseph Sizoo was pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington where Abraham Lincoln often attended. Among Sizoo’s most memorable moments was the day he held Lincoln’s own Bible—the same Bible from which Lincoln’s mother had read to him as a child. Sizoo remembers, “Book in my hand, I wondered where it would fall open. It opened to a page which was thumb-marked and which he must have read many times. It was the thirty-seventh Psalm…’Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.’“

Today in the Word, April, 1989, p. 12

***************************************************************************************************************

Friend, when have there been times in your life when you needed to make a difficult decision because you felt the hand of God working in your life?

Prayer:

Dear Father in heaven, forgive us our weaknesses, instill in us strength and the wisdom to recognize your hand in our lives. We humbly ask that you keep your hand upon us to guide us and lead us in the direction that will hold up what is right and just in your eyes and will glorify you, oh Lord. We thank you for heroic men of faith like Abraham Lincoln. We pray that your purpose for our lives will help make our world a better world bringing peace and harmony to all mankind. We ask this in the name of your son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen

May God be with you and may He continue to protect you and yours!

Peace, love, joy and thanksgiving in Christ Jesus, our Savior!

Humbly yours, Marie Antoinette

All life matters – from conception on!