Week 26 Day 4
The Great Counselor
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
1 John 4:7
Bless’d be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
After Jesus’ death and resurrection, he promised to send his disciples a helper, the Holy Spirit. Abraham Lincoln was the first and only American president to call upon the Holy Spirit publicly. On July 15, 1863, Lincoln wrote to the American people, “I invite the people of the United States to invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit . . . to guide the counsels of the government with wisdom adequate to so great a national emergency, and to visit with tender care and consolation throughout the length and breadth of our land all those who, through the vicissitudes of marches, voyages, battles, and sieges, have been brought to suffer in mind, body, or estate.” Lincoln asked the Holy Spirit to give divine wisdom and knowledge and to help console the afflicted. Lincoln leaned not only on a “higher power,” but named God’s only Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.