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THE PROPER MEMORIAL
“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.”
Ramblings of some modern “right-wing fundamentalist?” Hardly. This is a portion of the proclamation of March 30, 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln appointing a National Fast Day. President Lincoln went on to declare, “Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.”
Out of the days following the Civil War grew a movement to remember those brave Americans who fell in that war. Over time, the remembrance, now known as Memorial Day, grew to include honoring the sacrifice of all of our Armed Forces service members. Without a doubt, it is an appropriate and honorable thing to do.
At the same time, Americans must recognize, as did President Lincoln, that all of our national blessings begin not with our Armed Forces, but with the provision from the bountiful hand of God. It is unfortunate that we fail to take seriously the bountiful hand of God, and that we have, as President Lincoln reminds us, forgotten Him.
On this Memorial Day, then, and beyond, let us also make the proper memorial, which is to “rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings” (President Lincoln) and to “teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the Lord swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.” (Deuteronomy 11:19-21)
In Christ,
Pastor Chuck
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