With Firmness in the Right - Weeks Eight and Nine: Holms on the Potomac

When I was in grade school, February was my best month—right after my birthday came Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on the 12^th, and George Washington’s on the 22^nd. Their portraits hung on the walls of our classrooms. To me, Lincoln was extra special because he ended slavery in our country. Visiting their monuments in Washington D.C. was a distant dream that came true for us last Saturday.

We drove our car to a Metro Station and rode the subway for about an hour. A middle school history teacher (with tweens in tow) from a Seventh Day Adventist school in California taught us how to tour D.C. (She’s my new hero!) They got off at the National Zoo; we got off at the wrong stop. In downtown DC, our GPS wasn’t working and we were nervous until we found a hotel concierge who gave us directions. (Hurrah for kind people!) At the National Mall, we boarded the Circulator bus and rested our feet while riding to the LINCOLN MEMORIAL.

We love the Lincoln Memorial, one of the most sacred sites in D.C.

Near the statue of the Great Emancipator, we read the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. These words made me weep: “Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained … 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 … 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, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

It’s my fervent prayer that our nation—still under God—will overcome the hatred and divisions that plague us—may we attain “a just and lasting peace among ourselves.” I believe that faith in Jesus Christ is the way to make our hearts as one.

At the World War II Memorial, many veterans in wheelchairs proudly saluted tourists who thanked them for their service. They had come by bus from Indiana.

We wound up at the Washington Monument, grateful for Washington, the man of God and military strategist who guided our troops in the Revolutionary War. Then we celebrated the cultures in our U.S. melting pot by eating Chicken Gyro and Swarma with kabobs from a food truck. Riding the subway home in the beautiful Maryland spring weather, we were grateful for the people, both famous and unknown, whose sacrifices continue to bless this nation.