So today is a big day. People are going to polling places and votes are being tabulated for the presidential election as well as Senate, seats in the House of Representatives, Boards of Education and local referenda. It’s been a fractious and dizzying election season, and I fear it may stretch on for a while before the outcome is clear. But here’s something I know to be certain: Tomorrow the sun will rise, the dog will need to go for a walk, the mail will get delivered, and we will still go on about our lives.
On the first Saturday of March 1865, Abraham Lincoln offered his Second Inaugural Address as President. When he spoke, the Civil War would continue for another six weeks before all the Confederate armies would surrender. Terrible destruction had been suffered by both sides of the conflict.
In the speech, Lincoln did not dismiss the sin of slavery for the sake of unity. He was quite explicit in naming it as unjust, worthy of judgment and an offense against God and the enslaved. But he did so while recognizing the sin of both the North and the South. Then, he ended his speech with a remarkable statement:
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 orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
May God help us to show love and kindness, compassion and humility, love and respect as we go forward from this moment. My hope and prayer is that we can find ways to live and thrive as as “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Grace and peace,
Pastor Steve