In this time that is troubling for so many in our country, the following excerpt from “The Light and the Glory” by Peter Marshall, Jr., and David Manuel, I find very fitting for “such a time as this.”
When the Puritans and Pilgrims experienced a natural calamity—a prolonged drought, a plague of grasshoppers— their response was to search their souls collectively as well as individually in a day of fasting and repentance. On this day in 1863, with the war news progressively worsening, Abraham Lincoln followed their example:
“It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon…Those nations only are blessed whose GOD is the Lord.”
President Lincoln’s Fast Day Proclamation was reprinted in newspapers throughout the North:
“We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten GOD, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the GOD that made us! It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
Bill Gaither wrote a beautiful song that describes the purpose of this Holy Week, and why GOD is the One Who truly is the answer for what we need today: Because He Lives, by Bill Gaither
GOD sent His Son
They called Him Jesus,
He came to love, heal and forgive,
He bled and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives!
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow,
Because He lives, all fear is gone,
Because I know, I know, He holds the future,
And life is worth the living JUST BECAUSE HE LIVES!
Rae M. Piepho, Lutsen
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