Dear Church Family –
Yesterday was the 161st anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. The Gettysburg Address has been called “the greatest speech in American history.” It was remarks that President Abraham Lincoln made at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Gettysburg was the site of one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of the Civil War.
It appears to me that the Gettysburg Address is needed as much today as it was 161 years ago. As I read it again yesterday, I lingered over the last long sentence that begins, “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us…” I turned it into a prayer. I hope you will as well. Here’s the whole speech for your reflection:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
"But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Praying for a new birth of freedom in Christ and His freeing principles – Pastor Tim
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2 Corinthians 3:17)
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