Gettysburg

We traveled to Gettysburg, PA with friends to experience motorhome travel together and learn about the Civil War battle that took place there. The travel experience and friendly fellowship was great. However, learning the about the events of the war was saddening. I was there many years ago as a young man. I remember learning about the event, but I don’t remember feeling the sadness of tragedy. I suppose I have a different perspective at 70 years old than I did when I was 16 and knew everything. The two things I realized now were how tragic the war was for our country and how similar the political rhetoric of that time is to the political rhetoric of today. I am not going to attempt to explain the history because historic information is very accessible to all of us who are interested in knowing more about that period of time, but I did include a few photos here to give some idea of what took place.

As you can see, the last three photos in this slideshow are of me, Tim, and Nate, each posed with a statue of President Lincoln. I thought I would take a clever pose of having a conversation with the president. I texted it to our four kids. in a matter of minutes Tim texted his photo saying “I know what you mean.” Of course, as a history teacher, he had been to Gettysburg in the past and had a photo of himself at the very same statue as my photo. A couple hours later Nate texted his photo. It turns out that in the meantime he had gone to a sporting goods store in Eden Prairie, MN near were he lives in Minnesota and there were four statues there of famous people. One of them was Lincoln. So he took the photo and upstaged my own attempt at cleverness. I suppose it is more special to me than to anyone else, but I did think it was a bit funny how my effort to create a special photo was quickly countered by both Tim and Nate.

We can keep in mind this often quoted Bible verse: 2 Chronicles 7:14
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.