It's Not Over Until The Fat Lady Sings

When thinking about our nation it is critical to remember that this nation is a work in progress. Throughout the relatively short history of the United States God has raised up some of His most noble men and women to move forward the divine mission of this nation--line upon line. It spite of being chosen by God they, like the rest of us, were imperfect people who stumbled along making mistakes and taking wrong turns. They, as Joseph Ellis says, "... were improvising without a script in a historical drama without a known conclusion." (p. 22) In other words, our history was their present so they didn't have the luxury of hindsight.

In spite of their weaknesses and imperfections there is no doubt that God used them anyway to do His work in His way. Therefore, it is a sad when there are those who choose to vilify these great men and women because they often held the wrong assumptions and prejudices of the persons of their time and place in history.

Frederick Douglass was one person who understood this as revealed through the speech Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln that he gave April 14, 1876 at the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln 11 years after Lincoln's assassination. Although Douglass acknowledged in this speech that Lincoln was a white man in his interests, associations, habits of thought, and prejudices that were common to his countrymen towards the colored race, he also acknowledged that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of the great movement that would forever abolish slavery in the United States. Douglass also recognized that the fact that they were able to assemble in peace in front of this monument was "... a compliment and credit to American civilization, and a prophecy of still greater national enlightenment and progress in the future." (p. 1)

As the saying goes in relationship to an opera that it isn't over until the fat lady sings, our nation's divine mission isn't yet complete. As our noble, yet imperfect, predecessors fulfilled their part in moving forward the divine mission of this nation so must each of us now do our part in spite of our weaknesses and imperfections.


References

Ellis, J. J. (2007). American Creation. New York: Random House, Inc.

Douglass, F. (1876). Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln. Retrieved May 6, 2008 from the World Wide Web: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=39