Recently Chris Cuomo on CNN declared, “If you believe in one another and if you do the right thing for yourself and your community, things will get better in this country. You don’t need help from above. It’s within us.” Interesting, Mr. Cuomo, how’s that all working out for us right now?
Let’s juxtapose that with what Abraham Lincoln wrote in his proclamation on August 12, 1861 to the nation when the fabric of America was being torn in two over the issue of slavery and by the bloodshed of the Civil War. His proclamation was a call to prayer and fasting for our nation. “And whereas it is fit and becoming in all people, at all times, to acknowledge and revere the Supreme Government of God; to bow in humble submission to his chastisements; to confess and deplore their sins and transgressions in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and to pray, with all fervency and contrition, for the pardon of their past offences, and for a blessing upon their present and prospective action.” It is always fitting for a nation to seek God. Mr. Cuomo suggested to find wisdom is to look within us. This runs in direct contradiction to the words of the Savior. Jesus said, “for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander (Matthew 15:19). Abraham Lincoln recognized the place for humble submission before God and the role of confessing and deploring the sinful nature that dwells in the hearts of man. Such an expression of the fear of the Lord is where a president, a congressman, a judge, a journalist, and a citizen discover true wisdom.
I can’t help but think of this in light of recent events at St. John’s church in Washington, DC. When Pam and I attended the inauguration of Donald Trump in January of 2017, we were able to pray in St. John’s sanctuary for our newly elected president on the afternoon before his inauguration. In that place, we realized that we were sitting in a sanctuary attended by every president since its first service was held on October 27, 1816. On the morning of Donald Trump’s inauguration, he joined other leading pastors in prayer to seek God’s wisdom to lead our nation. I have often reflected on the importance of every president humbling himself before God and bowing his heart in acknowledgement of his need for Divine Wisdom. If anyone should try to lead our nation without it, how certain is their destiny to be disrupted by forces of evil outside and inside himself.
Abraham Lincoln sought the return of the blessing and favor of the Lord upon our nation. In a later proclamation on May 30, 1863, he declared that we had “forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us…and have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.” Prayer played a significant role in the heart of President Lincoln and in the hearts of America’s citizens. He called the nation to prayer and I would like to call all who read this to prayer. Here’s Lincoln’s appeal. “And I do earnestly recommend to all the People, and especially to all ministers and teachers of religion of all denominations, and to all heads of families, to observe and keep that day according to their several creeds and modes of worship, in all humility and with all religious solemnity, to the end that the united prayer of the nation may ascend to the Throne of Grace and bring down plentiful blessings upon our Country.
Let’s not take the advice of current pundits. Let’s seek the Lord for the healing of our nation and let’s believe that God will answer our prayers for our nation. We are not yet divided like our nation during the Civil War. If God healed our land during such a crisis, He can do it once again.