Presidents Day etc

"For God so loVed the world,
That He gAve
His onLy
BegottEn
SoN
ThaT Whosoever
Believeth In Him
Should Not perish,
But have Everlasting life."
John 3:16

I've been cleaning up my computer and found the above ... and since we're still close to Valentine Day, I thought I'd post it.

Some years from Abe to George's birthdays in February I put a little log cabin on the kitchen table. The red, white, and blue runner, I wove. I was just thinking how log cabins still have an appeal today. Monte always talks about building a small one someday. We visited one in Wisconsin last fall and couldn't get over the size of the logs!

Here's a quote from Abraham Lincoln ...

“Neither [side] anticipated that the cause of the conflict [i.e., slavery] might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ’Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

God is not at a nation's beck and call, but the nation at His. God transcends our humanity's limited vision.