campfire anthems

i was presented this quote and thought it would be a perfect thing to write about.  this quote was by the honorable abraham lincoln in 1863.  he said,

“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 number, 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 who made us.  it behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

wow.  i just can’t help but to read something like that, written by such a powerful and influential person from american history and not think about how far we have come since those words were spoken.  how far have we come though?  sure, we’ve made superior headway in medicine, science, and other technologies, but read the words he spoke again.  i don’t think we have come far at all.  in fact, i think we have continued to digress into the poverty that is sin.  how far will we go the next hundred years?  i think i’m glad that i won’t be around to see.