Emphasis Preaching Journal

Abraham Lincoln appreciated humor in his life. It was a way of alleviating the burdens of life and eventually the weight of office and the strain and tragedy of the Civil War. He was also a man of prayer. He attended a church regularly, though he was not a member, and he once said, "I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction I had nowhere else to go."

In his Second Inaugural Address he agonized over the war and the relationship of the two sides. He said, "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other ... The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes."

The books of Lincoln's jokes could fill a library of their own, but it is said that Lincoln's favorite of the contemporary jokes about himself was the one with the two Quaker ladies comparing Lincoln and the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis.

The first lady said, "I think Jefferson will succeed."

The second Quaker said, "Why does thee think so?"

The first said, "Because Jefferson is a praying man."

The second said, "But Abraham is also a praying man."

The first Quaker lady replied, "Yes, but the Lord will think Abraham is joking."

-- Mosley