If Abraham Lincoln were alive today he would be 200 years old! He would also be shocked (and maybe even appalled) at the state of his beloved country.
He was born in a cabin in Kentucky and obtained an education through his own love of learning --mostly through reading. He became an eloquent public speaker, and a great writer whose phrases still inspire us. He was known to sit up late into the night, discussing Shakespeare's plays with White House visitors. He kept the union together, he freed the slaves. He quoted the Bible more than any other president and his Gettysburg address speaks for itself.
He was six feet four and gaunt looking. At first glance, most people thought he was homely. He could laugh it off. A rival once called him "two-faced" during a political debate and he replied, "I leave it to my audience. If I had another face, do you think I'd wear this one?"
Lincoln said:
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all 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." (Proclamation for a National Fast Day, March 30, 1863.)
Our country is going through another humbling--let's hope there are enough people who have not forgotten God that we won't be a lost cause.
Happy 200th Abraham Lincoln.
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