This is the one-hundred-fortieth lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.
On March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln gave a short speech for his second inauguration. The weather was foul. It had rained for weeks in Washington, turning Pennsylvania Avenue into a sea of mud. The crowd stood in the muck at the base of the Capitol’s steps, its stately new dome one sign of hope the nation might actually survive its trauma. Journalist Noah Brooks was there and reported that, as Lincoln got up from his seat, “A roar of applause shook the air, and, again and again repeated, finally dying away on the outer fringe of the throng, like a sweeping wave upon the shore.” Then Brooks says, “Just at that moment the sun, which had been obscured all day, burst forth in its unclouded meridian splendor and flooded the spectacle with glory and with light.” The journalist noted that Lincoln later said to him, “Did you notice that sunburst? It made my heart jump.”
Fifty-eight years ago, USA civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, DC, where he delivered his famous 
By Hannah Brencher
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