"The best sermon and wisest preaching I ever heard was about Lord Jesus announcing the establishment of the Kingdom of God-the reality of humanity being a family, a spiritual association founded in love and justice. The preacher said the hardest thing was to believe that and order one's living accordingly. And he said the second hardest was finding peace of soul in life. Yes, indeed." He paused to remember and affirm that truth.
He gathered his strength and continued, "That's faith, sir: living with our selfishness and yet seeking and making honorable efforts, with a mixture of success to live, choose, and act for the benefit of others." As if he needed to better state his altar call, his summons to repent and believe, he added, "Faith is living in our sinfulness, yet creating sanctified acts, holy works. It is honoring and holding on to a peace within as we struggle. Accepting our selfishness must come first and then our acting for others becomes a holy expression of redemption. And that, sir, offers hope and the possibility of justice.
"Reckon with complicity, sir. Well sir we all are implicated in the hells and heavens we create or allow! History must teach that if it is to offer any guidance, be of any value." Confident that he had out-preached the preacher, he relaxed in satisfaction. Hearing no "Amen," he resumed the lesson after a few moments.
"Sir, consider my involvement in the Civil War." His temper was evidently provoked, just as the energy of a believer is sharpened by the conversion illumination. "If I had been totally self serving, I would have made it to Washington to give support to the Federal government. Lincoln and Johnson would have welcomed my acting on our beloved Jackson's conviction that the Federal Union must be preserved. I could have had any office at their disposal. There was talk of me as Treasury Secretary in 1853 and 1857. I, George Washington Jones, would have been taken care of I warrant!"
"I knew Lincoln, sir, served with him on the Post Office and Post Roads committee." He changed tack, reminding me of his and Lincoln's service together. My Mr. Jones sat in the House of Representatives and worked with Lincoln in the struggle for government patronage jobs during the Whig administration of Zachary Taylor. Lincoln was watching out and working for his Whig constituents in central Illinois; Jones was doing the same for southern middle Tennessee Democrats. He probable sat listening to Lincoln's January 18, 1848 anti-Mexican War speech that doomed Lincoln's first effort at political prominence.
After a puzzled look his face cleared, "Lincoln surprised me, as he did a lot of folk. When I knew him he was conniving and frivolous, just another gasping young politician, unlike me," his smug smile indicated the joke was on himself, and maybe on me.