Four Score and Seven Years Ago

Leadership

On November 19, 1863, after waiting for nearly two hours for the speaker before him to finish, President Abraham Lincoln took to the podium. It was a crisp, sunny autumn day in central Pennsylvania, and war had clearly shifted in favor of the Union. Victories a few months prior on the very grounds he stood as well as Vicksburg, had crushed the South and proved to be the psychological and military turning points of the great Civil War. But there was still significant work to be done.

Now, with his tall, lanky frame and his unmistakable voice, he addressed the crowd of 20,000 people. "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."

"Tell us, are you the Messiah?' But he replied, 'If I tell you, you won't believe me. And if I ask you a question, you won't answer. But from now on the Son of Man will be seated in the place of power at God's right hand.'" (Luke 22:67-69)

Jesus and Lincoln are saying similar things. Talk is cheap; it's your actions that matter, and you are called to continue in the fight for freedom. Jesus said, I came to set the captives free, and even though that makes you uncomfortable, and you don’t truly believe me, I'm not going anywhere. I'll prove it by what happens next.

Lincoln says freedom is too important a cause to just sit around and talk about it. Let's honor the men who gave their lives for our country by continuing the difficult work of fighting for freedom. We can't just talk a good game; let's finish the work.

They both gave their lives for the cause of freedom.

What are you fighting for? It is for self, for recognition, for your own agenda, for control? Or are you fighting for others, for unity, for the team, the family, for good? Are you honoring the work that was done to put you in a position of opportunity or feeling entitled?

Liberty and freedom have a price.

Let your actions and your words line up. Honor the ones who laid their lives down for your freedom, especially the One who sits at God's right hand, by finishing the work.

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 battlefield 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 the 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.