Humiliation

Humiliation. Now there is a word, a condition, a place we will do most anything to stay away from. However, it is most fitting that President Abraham Lincoln, in his powerful government proclamation of April 30, 1863, called the nation to "a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer." Steeped in the dead center of the Civil War, we were a nation, much like today, suffering great humiliation and division.

Better to fall on the rock, than have the rock fall up us. Better, as President Lincoln proclaimed to our nation, to "recognize the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God" and "own our dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess our sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow" than to continue in this place where "we have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us" and "in the deceitfulness of our hearts...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!" Better to humble ourselves, than suffer any more humiliation!

Abraham Lincoln got it right and changed the course of our history by recognizing Almighty God who has the power to do so.