What fills your times of solitude? Assuming that you put away your devices, take the buds out of your ear, and leave the company of other people – that you are truly alone with yourself – what do you think about? Whatever occupies your mind is what you will take into your interactions with others. “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:20).
Abraham Lincoln pondered the guilt of Americans and the judgments of God. After his death, this was found in his writings: “The will of God prevails – In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is somewhat different from the purpose of either party.” (in Joshua Wolf Shenk, “Lincoln’s Melancholy”)
Lincoln’s took his private thoughts public in his second Inaugural Address. “Both (sides) 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.’”
Lincoln stunned the presumption of both North and South, that God was on their side, but his biblically inspired words hit the triumphalism of the North especially hard. From his inner life, he understood that the Law of God hammers our presumptions. After the speech, he wrote to Thurlow Weed, “Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.” (Wall Street Journal, March 1; C13). President Lincoln delivered his profound words 150 years ago today. “Pay attention to what you hear” (Mark 4:24).
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