“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 [all people] are created equal.... Now we are engaged in
... testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so
dedicated, can long endure.... It is for us the living ... to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work ... thus far so nobly advanced
.... To be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ...
–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
NEW THOUGHT: EVERYTHING NEW, EVERYONE NEW
In this new year, we are now–each and every one of us–as always, in a new place, doing new things, and forming a new life, a new world and a new future in the only way that new things can ever be formed: first in mind and then in manifestation. Thoughts are things, so we cannot have one kind of mind and another kind of life, one kind of talk and another kind of nation, one kind of consciousness and another kind of experience. Our “more perfect union” calls for better words and deeds and, certainly, New Thought.
Nearly twelve score years ago, the Declaration of Independence was signed–a document of high ideals and compelling promise, signaling the beginning of the great American experiment. Eighty-seven years after the signing of that document of grand intention (a good long human lifetime, by Biblical standards) President Abraham Lincoln addressed a nation terribly divided. His famous phrase: “four score and seven" was an allusion to the King James Version of the Bible's Psalms 90:10, in which the human life span was given as "threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years." In other words, in 1863, our nation had already had more than a “lifetime” to form a healthy unity of purpose. Yet, we were still just beginning. A score of years past the turn of the last century, life is still consciousness and we are still just beginning; but the work is still worth doing, and in many ways, it is still new. “And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us …” (Ps. 90:17).
Let us work together in peace in this New Year. |
