Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday
Reflection
Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by
declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it, “all men are created equal except negroes.” When the Know-nothings get control, it will read, “all men are created equal except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.” When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty–to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
Abraham Lincoln
Prayer
May all Americans, especially those who are elected leaders, think and act with integrity and unity.
Action
Consider the divisions in our nation. How many are based in what we say are our real values and how many play to our darker nature? Are you part of this? If so, why? What can you do to help bring about healing?
Suggested Reading
Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?
Matthew 7:3
If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:46-48
For we are taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord but also in the eyes of others.
2 Corinthians 8:21
This year marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the guardian of liberty, who labored tirelessly that “this nation, under God, [might] have a new birth of freedom”. Building a future of freedom requires love of the common good and cooperation in a spirit of subsidiarity and solidarity.
Pope Francis address to Congress 2015
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.”
President Abraham Lincoln, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
Abraham Lincoln
How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
Abraham Lincoln
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
Albert Einstein
You do not lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Note:
At the age of twenty-eight, Abraham Lincoln gave one of the great speeches of his life. He had been asked to speak at the Young Men’s Lyceum at Springfield, the capital city of Illinois. He chose as his subject, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” The date was January 27, 1837. Lincoln deplored the spirit of lawlessness that was increasing among the people. He said: “There is even now something of ill omen amongst us. I mean that increasing disregard for law which pervades the country — the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passion in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice. The disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours … it would be a violation of truth to deny.” He was not afraid of invasion from without, but he saw the ominous possibility of self-destruction from within. He said: “At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.”