Memorial Day begun by slaves

May 25, 2009  BY BRIAN HICKS, THE POST AND COURIER (Charleston, South Carolina)Charleston was in ruins.
The peninsula was nearly deserted, the fine houses empty, the streets littered with the debris of fighting and the ash of fires that had burned out weeks before. The Southern gentility was long gone, their cause lost.
In the weeks after the Civil War ended, it was, some said, “a city of the dead.”
On a Monday morning that spring, nearly 10,000 former slaves marched onto the grounds of the old Washington Race Course, where wealthy Charleston planters and socialites had gathered in old times. During the final year of the war, the track had been turned into a prison camp. Hundreds of Union soldiers died there.
For two weeks in April, former slaves had worked to bury the soldiers. Now they would give them a proper funeral.
The procession began at 9 a.m. as 2,800 black school children marched by their graves, softly singing “John Brown’s Body.”
Soon, their voices would give way to the sermons of preachers, then prayer and — later —picnics. It was May 1, 1865, but they called it Decoration Day.
On that day, former Charleston slaves started a tradition that would come to be known as Memorial Day.
Read complete story on original website

Gotta tell ya, this kinda puts Lincoln's Gettysburg Address into a different context for me. The liberated paying tribute with prayer and thanksgiving for the liberators. Especially when Lincoln says that it is to we the living to be rededicated in devotion to the cause for which the dead had given their last full measure of devotion. Liberty, equality, justice, unity. Yeah, it's sad that this day has become an excuse for drinking, eating, and appliance sales. But I think that it's also too bad that it gets confused and interchanges with Veteran's Day, Labor Day, Armed Forces Day, All Saint's Day, and Flag Day. It shouldn't be about empty patriotism, flag waving or political posturing any more than it should be about beer, brats, and boating.

If we take the example of those slaves almost 146 years ago, we will listen to God's Word and spend time in prayer. Recognizing the enormous sacrifice of those who have lost their lives serving to protect our freedoms. If we follow President Lincoln's advice, we will devote ourselves for the same things they sacrificed for. It's not about the flag, it's not about our colors or our pride. Shouldn't it be about liberty, equality, unity, and justice? Of ALL the people, by ALL the people, and for ALL  the people.

Yes for the fallen troops, but also for what they were fighting for. That's what I believe we need to remember and memorialize today. May God direct our words, thoughts, and actions so that we do just that. "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." ~Galations 6:8

Old John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,
While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;
But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,
His soul is marching on. 

John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave,
And Kansas knows his valor when he fought her rights to save;
Now, tho the grass grows green above his grave,
His soul is marching on. 

He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru;
They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew,
But his soul is marching on. 

John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see,
Christ who of the bondmen shall the Liberator be,
And soon thruout the Sunny South the slaves shall all be free,
For his soul is marching on. 

The conflict that he heralded he looks from heaven to view,
On the army of the Union with its flag red, white and blue.
And heaven shall ring with anthems o’er the deed they mean to do,
For his soul is marching on. 

Ye soldiers of Freedom, then strike, while strike ye may,
The death blow of oppression in a better time and way,
For the dawn of old John Brown has brightened into day,
And his soul is marching on

Praying for people who drive you crazy

"How many of us have conflicts with someone else- and how many of us pray for that person? We have individuals with whom we are competitive, or whom we dislike or have a quarrel with; but very few of us have true enemies in the martial sense. And yet if Lincoln could pray fervently- and contemporary reports indicate he did- for the people who were opposing him, how much more can we do for someone we just find a little irritating?" 
— John Wooden (A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring)

For the Fourth; Think about Lincoln's words

One of the best things about the 4th is that you get to here the Gettysburg Address recited. I must have read these words hundreds of times, yet they never fail to make tears well up in my eyes and my throat clench up.

Nov. 19, 1863, the incredibly unpopular and decidedly divisive Abraham Lincoln traveled to a town in Pennsylvania to participate in the dedication ceremony of a new cemetery.
This is what Lincoln said:

Fourscore 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.

Liberty is another word for freedom, it means having the right to make choices, to make decisions that effect your life. The Declaration of Independence stated that ALL men were created equal. Of course, to Congress at the time, that probably meant male, white, registered as church members, who owned their own land.

The point that Lincoln was trying to make was that black, African-Americans, including slaves were equal too and entitled to the same liberties as the rest of us. I contend that every human being is endowed by our creator with the same certain inalienable rights, not just men, not just Americans, but all of us were meant to be free.

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 battlefield of that war.

Remember, at Lincoln’s time the U.S. was less than a 100 years old, the rest of the world was keeping their eye on us- we were an experiment in democracy and since we’d fallen into civil war, it looked like the experiment was about to fail. Just think about how people today watched the elections in Lebanon, Iraq, and most recently in Iran.

We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have hallowed 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.

To say something is Holy, consecrated, or sacred simply means to set it aside for God’s use, to dedicate it for His special purposes, if you will.

It didn’t matter if the President of the United States or all the important dignitaries you could drag out conducted any kind of a ceremony at all. What made that place special was the blood of all the servicemen that was spilled there. Their deaths and sacrifice made that plot of ground forever important and unique. Lincoln pointed out that the people who didn’t die there had something else that they needed to be doing:

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion-

We too, should constantly be re-dedicating ourselves to what those veterans were dedicated to. This is why it’s so important to support our troops, even when, like me, you don’t support the politicians and their misguided policies.

Sure, there’s been wars we shouldn’t have gotten into. Maybe some of them were motivated by interests that weren’t as well examined or scrutinized as they should have been.

Since America IS her people, and people are fundamentally flawed and sinful, America has made, does make, and is bound to make mistakes. But as long as American soldiers served to protect freedom and fought to establish and maintain justice, no American soldier ever died in vain.

Lincoln urges us from 1863 to be dedicated to preserving liberty and promoting equality. When we fail to, then it’s like letting them die in vain.

Each of us can do this in our own way. For some, it is by serving in the armed forces, for others it is by standing up and speaking out. We do it by exercising our liberties and by treating each other fairly and justly, as equal human beings, worthy of dignity and compassion. We do it by volunteering and participating in our communities.

Perhaps the simplest, easiest and most important way each of us does it, is when we vote.

that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation 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.

Once someone asked the age-old philosophical question, “why are we here?” And someone else answered, with both sarcasm and wisdom; “God put us here for each other.”

229 years later, (142 since the Gettysburg Address) this experiment in democracy still struggles, but it’s endured. So, let’s be dedicated to the motto on Iowa’s state flag, let’s prize our liberties and maintain our rights, otherwise what is there worth fighting for?

Dear Republican friends, neighbors, and loved ones,

To paraphrase Lincoln, "Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the a conservative bent that by the accession of a Democratic Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection."

I hope that ALL Christians will pray for our new President elect, no matter how vehemently you opposed him.

Lincoln said a great deal in his first inaugural address that is valuable for us today-

""Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty...

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of so called 'culture wars.' The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."
I am loath to close. (as Sen. Obama pointed out last night)We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Please ask God to help ALL of us seek what is best and how we can find common ground.