A
Ahimsa
Guest
**Abraham Lincoln, a skeptic and lifelong depressive, never assumed that God was on the Union’s side but accepted divine will.
**By Joshua Wolf Shenk http://images.beliefnet.com/imgs/x.gif http://images.beliefnet.com/imgs/x_ccc.gif Abraham Lincoln shows how suffering can be bound up with spiritual purpose. He sank so deeply into that suffering and came away with a felicitous blend of humility and determination. Whatever ship carried him on life’s rough waters, Lincoln came to believe that he was not the captain but merely a subject of the divine force—call it fate or God or the “Almighty Architect” of existence. Yet, however humble his station, Lincoln knew himself to be no idle passenger but a sailor on deck with a job to do. In his strange mix of deference to divine authority and willful exercise of his own meager power, Lincoln achieved transcendent wisdom, the delicate fruit of a lifetime of pain.
**By Joshua Wolf Shenk http://images.beliefnet.com/imgs/x.gif http://images.beliefnet.com/imgs/x_ccc.gif Abraham Lincoln shows how suffering can be bound up with spiritual purpose. He sank so deeply into that suffering and came away with a felicitous blend of humility and determination. Whatever ship carried him on life’s rough waters, Lincoln came to believe that he was not the captain but merely a subject of the divine force—call it fate or God or the “Almighty Architect” of existence. Yet, however humble his station, Lincoln knew himself to be no idle passenger but a sailor on deck with a job to do. In his strange mix of deference to divine authority and willful exercise of his own meager power, Lincoln achieved transcendent wisdom, the delicate fruit of a lifetime of pain.