Heal Our Land
By: Jack Wyman
The solitary candle gently flickered in the window as twilight descended upon the gray and barren day of early spring.
Sitting at his desk in concentrated thought, he bowed his noble head. The lines of weary anguish creased his kind yet melancholic face. The deep-set intelligent eyes betrayed a profound sadness. Yes, he had aged, noticeably.
Three years earlier, as the nation stood at the precipice of war, Abraham Lincoln had sounded confident. Wrapping up his campaign for the Presidency, he told a crowd:
“I know there is a God and I know he hates injustice. I see the storm coming, but I know his hand is in it. And if he has a place and a part for me, I believe that I am ready.”
Lincoln was a spiritual fatalist. He believed in an irrefutable destiny set in motion by a sovereign God. Though he mocked faith as an ambitious young man, his maturity through grief and depression had given him a serene wisdom. God was in every storm, even and especially this one. His will and purpose triumphed over the futile struggles of men.
Though God’s hand was often inscrutable, Lincoln rested in the assurance that Divine Providence, powerful and pre-determined, would, in the end, prevail over the sins of mortality. Shrouded in mystery, the purposes of God stood immutable. He might not know them, but Lincoln trusted them.
It was this conviction—this view of life and the world through which it passed—that strengthened Lincoln’s resolve and steeled him for the horrific and bloody national calamity that was to be—and his central part in it. At Cooper Union in New York City, the candidate for President had laid out his firm belief in his closing remarks:
“Let us have faith that right makes might, and, in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
The Civil War had taken its fiery toll for two long years. There seemed no end in sight. The decisive turn at Gettysburg was still to come. The nation had become a remorseless and gruesome butcher shop. The bodies continued to pile up as cordwood. Before it ended, the conflict would claim more than 620,000 American lives on their own blood-soaked soil and change America forever.
On this day in late March 1863, the President, determined to save the Union, took pen in hand and wrote out an appeal to humility; an appeal to faith; an appeal to contrition; an appeal to Almighty God.
Though it was written as a proclamation, it read as a prayer. Lincoln minced no words and offered none as comfort. He threw down the gauntlet of piety at the feet of American prosperity and success. This was a presidential sermon. It was a call upon the nation to walk the aisle of repentance. The President wrote:
“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. . .with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon.”
In this, Lincoln made no distinction between North and South.
There would be no concessions to pride, arrogance, self-reliance, or narcissism. This was not about American greatness; it was about American humility.
Yes, Lincoln acknowledged, America had grown in power and wealth, unlike any other nation on earth. Many had accumulated much.
“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. . . that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.”
No American president, before or since, has so directly invoked spiritual truth with the eloquent candor and courage of a preacher in the pulpit. This president delivered an invitation to his fellow countrymen:
“It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
Abraham Lincoln attached his signature to a Proclamation calling for a “National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer.”
On this day, Americans would be encouraged to take time from their daily pursuits and gather to pray for their country. Wrote the President:
“Let us then rest humbly in the hope. . . that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high and answered with blessings no less than the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.”
Repentance and forgiveness are not popular themes in America on this, our National Day of Prayer. Our spirit in a bitterly divided nation is not to confess or repent. It is to fight. We will come together, including many Christians, and we will pray for God’s blessings and grace upon our country. We will give thanks. As we should.
Many will also hope God may forgive them—those we regard as political enemies and haters of America. For we are right—and they are wrong. We want to make America great again. They want to destroy America.
With the stakes so high, and they are, it is tempting to see repentance not as a confession but as a needless and dangerous concession. To see it as weakness. After all, if we are right, what do we need to repent from? What national sins?
Lincoln knew the Bible better than many ministers. He was undoubtedly familiar with 2 Chronicles 7:14. This famous verse, often misapplied to America, is God’s invitation to Israel. It is also God’s invitation to each of us. An invitation to pray, repent, and to turn from our sins, and to humbly seek the face of God and his will.
On this National Day of Prayer, may this be our spirit, our hope, and our united cry to a merciful and gracious God. Forgive us, God. Cleanse us from our sins and renew a right spirit within us.
Heal us, we pray. And heal our land.
To order Jack Wyman’s book, “Everything Else: Stories of Life, Faith and Our World”, go to amazon.com, Christian Book Distributors or barnesandnoble.com. It is also available on Kindle and eBooks.
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