Wide and Deep

During the Civil War, in a great act by one of America's greatest leaders, Abraham Lincoln set apart a day for national prayer proclaiming "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; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.....And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? 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!....It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness."

The Civil War continued. Many of its bloodiest battles followed. Years passed. Still, Lincoln prayed, acknowledging God's justice in the startling duration and the depths of the nation's suffering: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Thankfully, it did not require slash for lash to exorcise American slavery.  The extent and intensity of the nation's suffering was not matched to the nature and severity of its sins--because God is merciful.

As our leaders and people have strayed from the true and righteous judgment of God--preferring vanity, false hope, oppressive peace, and deceit--what will it take to exorcise the spirit of perverse judgment that condemns what is true and righteous and consigns it to the corners of our society and speech?