President's Day

In honor of President' Day, I thought I'd focus on patriotism for a moment.

I remember in high school I did a report on Abraham Lincoln. He was always my favorite president of the United States for some reason. Jimmy read a biography on him last year and shared some insightful things from his life. One of the funny quotes that I like is this, "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

But reading the short but powerful message of the Gettysburg Address reminded me why I love America.... because we are free. I'm grateful to live in such a great land. I do think we have a 'great task before us' - to hold to the basic values on which this country was founded.... in God we Trust.

Gettysburg Address
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."