This week, the USA turns 250. It comes at a time when our nation has become more sharply divided than any other in living memory.  

One man’s wisdom calls to us from an even more bitterly divided moment in American history. Six weeks before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln spoke to the bitter divisions of his day and how the American soul could look to the Lord for grace to heal them. 

“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,” Lincoln wrote in his 1865 second inaugural address. He sought to work for a “just and lasting peace” through faith—first in the Lord, and then in the potential of the American spirit to prevail.

Events vindicated Lincoln in his prayer for America. We must cling to our faith with no less strength in these times.