Week 15 Day 2

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Learn—Don’t Avenge

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.

Galatians 2:20

Close to the ignominious tree,

Jesus, my humbled soul would cleave;

Despised and crucified with thee,

With Christ resolved to die and live:

There would I bow my suppliant knee,

And own no other Lord but thee.

Lincoln put out the fires of revenge. He called for the Union not to settle the score but instead to learn from its mistakes. “Human nature will not change,” he wrote near the end of the war. “In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.” Do you heal scars or let them bleed? Lincoln aspired to make the Civil War a learning experience, to take all that had happened and reconstruct a better life for all. After your battles have been waged, learn from the experiences instead of taking revenge.