The Greatest task

Today is the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address.  There is a line in his brief speech that reminds me of our assignment as believers and followers of Jesus.  In dedicating the field where so many gave their lives for the cause of freedom, he points to those who remain and are standing before him as well as those who were to come.  


He says, “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us…” 

With those words, he challenged our nation with the task of uniting as “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice FOR ALL.”  As Christians, we understand that there is a GREAT TASK before us as well.  It is not the success of a nation, but the agenda of The Kingdom.  It reminds me of the scripture in Hebrews 12:1…

Therefore then, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us.

We each have an appointed course.  Those courses may look very different.  There may be twists and turns that seem puzzling.  However, at the end of the day, they should all be benefiting HIS KINGDOM in some fashion.  It is easy to get distracted in our busy existence to succeed in the various undertakings we pursue.  We want to be prosperous in our vocation.  We want to be great parents, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters.  There is nothing wrong with these desires, but we have to continue to look beyond function to purpose.  We must answer the question: why am I doing what I am doing?  

As long as we are living for The King, His Kingdom, and all that He desires for our lives, we will part of fulfilling the GREATer TASK. 


"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 battle-field 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 that 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."

-- Abraham Lincoln
Nov. 19, 1863

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