A Proclamation
As you read this, consider whether its message and declarations are any less relevant today than when it was written . . . 148 years ago:
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.
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.
We’re sure that, as a believing Christian, you can wholeheartedly agree with that message. As you can see by the facts included in the final paragraph, the issuer of this Proclamation was none other than one of the greatest of all United States presidents, Abraham Lincoln . . . calling for all peoples to not only fast and pray, but to humbly ask forgiveness of our personal and national sins.
Happy Birthday, America … on the 235th anniversary of your declaration of becoming a free and independent nation!
