The Weight of Our Past Brings the Hope of God’s Future

This past week I was with the youth group from the church I serve on a mission trip to Washington D.C. We were working with different organizations and church groups to better the community space that so many people share throughout that marvelous city. On Wednesday night we had free time to go and see the sights, sounds, smells and taste of the city and we ended up at the Lincoln Memorial as so many tourists often do. I ended up walking around with two of the youth as the others vied for photos we veered off to look at the words inscribed in the shrine to the 16^th President.

            The words of Lincoln’s second inaugural address pierce the room with their powerful implications, “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan. To do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” The girls with me asked the typical historical questions but I couldn’t help but wonder if they knew what those words really meant for the people of the 1860’s and the people of today.

            The nation in 1865 when Lincoln gave that speech was bloodied, broken and in need of some hope, and though our conflicts are vastly different than those of the Civil War era the complexities of many issues we face are no less daunting. We see the horrors of war and genocide abroad, we see political and spiritual infighting that threaten the fabric of everything we hold dear. But it is precisely in those moments when God does God’s best work.

            God reminds us that in our brokenness, weakness and despair that there is a life beyond even the greatest American dream. God reminds us that the hope of our time isn’t found in the leaders of this world but in a Jewish Rabbi who thought that the woman at the well had more wisdom than that of the religious folk of the time. Thousands of years later God took a boy born in a log cabin and made that boy the president who led our nation through a dark chapter. So we collectively and individually remember what God has done and will continue to do.

            Back to those girls who saw the monument with me, though they are young and still have so much to see in life as we all as a youth group walked back to our home for the week they gave me hope. They gave me hope because though the weight of history stood before them, and at times it seemed foreign, mysterious and far from any conceptions they had, their week was full of exactly what we as a people need: hope. So this week, when the weight of our time and history that has occurred before our time stares us in the face, let us remember a faith that gave grace to life, and hope that stands eternal through the ages.