Pessimism concerning our woeful predicament in Iraq and Iran and the greater Middle East permeates all points on the political compass. I confess that even my prodigious evangelical optimism is waning a bit in favor of a more traditional conservative and Calvinistic realism.

In that vein, I ask you to consider these private thoughts of Abraham Lincoln. In this untitled reflection, penned in September 1862, which has come to be known as the "Meditation on the Divine Will," Lincoln struggled to discern God's role in the Civil War. Lincoln served during a period in which Protestant Evangelicals, making up America's "most powerful political subculture," believed that a reign of Heaven on Earth could be achieved through human initiative. On both sides of the sectional conflict, great men of God reassured their national congregations that they were blessed uniquely with God's favor and doing the Lord's work. Lincoln took a slightly different perspective, envisioning a sovereign God in complete control and using human agency to achieve His own purposes. Lincoln, unlike so many of his contemporaries, saw the ways of God as mysterious and often beyond human understanding.

Lincoln:

"The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party -- and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true -- that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."