1 Corinthians 13 ~

 1 Corinthians 13

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴  Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

¹³ So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Debate was something I grew up with. Not the debate of a high school club, but thought and ideas. My parents never turned on the television. This doesn't mean it was ideal, I was so very surprised when 25 years of conversations ended. It probably had to do with the drinking. 

So. Let's talk about Abraham Lincoln. Which is kind of a family tradition. Any time there was a disagreement in my Uncle Carey's house - he would leave the table and get a cigar. Light it and his next phrase was, "Let's talk about Napoleon."  And he would. (He was the great-uncle who was leader of the Texas Senate and they graciously allowed him to be Governor of Texas for a day. Political favor becomes a party at the Governor's House.)

And of course this is an analogy for..... debate is great, but it really is for conversation. There is a real gap between:   When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. Hopefully.  I mean when I was a teenager, my parents were absolutely bewildered I enjoyed "The Life of Brian" because I totally bought into the deception they were making fun of people for mistaking Jesus. And later I was horrified I'd enjoyed the movie. It's wrong. It's humorous, but it's wrong.

So today we have Abraham Lincoln - whatever - Vampire Slayer Movie. It takes our over -glamorization of this human man and takes him into dark myth. It de-humanizes the man. It takes away the glory of his real work. 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

John 15:13

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

I seriously doubt the politician Lincoln was would have raised his hand for martyrdom.

Look at the eye of Mr. Lincoln in this first inaugural photo:  

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
Abraham Lincoln

A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.
Abraham Lincoln

A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Abraham Lincoln

This is a man gearing up for a fight. Not the self satisfied look some of the American Presidents have worn. 


Compare this to the second inaugural photo. Lincoln has spent time fighting the beginning of the fight, power struggles with  generals, perfecting the plan, running over civil liberties: 




Those eyes are cold. It isn't just sitting still.  And yes, the tie looks strange.You really could compare these eyes to those of a Box Turtle. They are almost reptilian.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
Abraham Lincoln

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln

"I once said, "We will bury you," and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you."
Nikita Khrushchev - which is exactly what Senator McCarthy thought as well. (And that didn't turn out so well.)

And Lincoln began to win the war. Perhaps with himself as well.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
Abraham Lincoln

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

Abraham Lincoln

“Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1885″ (Ward Hill Lamon, 1911):

About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break?

I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered.

There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers ‘The President’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin!’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which awoke me from my dream.

After President Lincoln’s assassination his casket was, in fact, put on a platform in the East room where soldiers were stationed to act as guards. Dreams are far from meaningless fantasy or random neurological discharge. They are direct communications from the source of being which guide us, grow us, enrich us, and on sad occasion, forewarn us of events destined to change the world.

John 15:13

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Here is Abraham Lincoln. His eyes are rheumy and he is much more complete. My family is Southern. I had a great-great grandmother who ate her cat in Vicksburg and never said the word Yankee without Damn in front of it. My grandmother seriously downplayed the family avoiding the Confederate side of the Union. Shiloh had family die on both sides, the surviving sides were Unionists.  Yet we all agreed, the worst thing for the South and Reconstruction was the assassination of Lincoln.

Respect. It is what the movie lacks.

"Poor is the nation that has no heroes....Shameful is the one that, having them .... forgets." 

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