THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
We are living in the midst of
history this
week.
On Monday, January 19,
"When we let freedom ring, when
we let
it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every
city,
we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black
men and
white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will all be
able to
join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at
last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!"
On January 19, president-elect
Barack
Obama, one day before he would take the oath of office as the
forty-fourth
president of the United States, stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial,
looked
out at the huge crowd gathered on the Washington Mall, and proclaimed
these
words:
"What gives me hope is what I
see when
I look out across this mall. For in these monuments are chisled those
unlikely
stories that affirm our unyielding faith—a faith that anything is
possible in
Reflective and with gratitude in
his voice
he further stated, as he looked at the tall spire of the
"Rising before us stands a
monument to
a man who led a small band of farmers and shopkeepers in revolution
against the
army of an empire, all for the sake of an idea."
That idea was freedom, winning
against
great odds the right to self-government in a free nation. The price was
phenomenal. The rewards since have been extraordinary.
The idea George Washington and
his
contemporaries held was that, indeed, "anything is possible in
Seeing the more-recently erected
World War
II monument in the Mall, Barack Obama said of it:
"(Here stands) a tribute to a
generation that withstood war and depression, men and women like my
grandparents who toiled on bomber assembly lines and marched across
Europe to
free the world from tyranny's grasp."
Then, looking at the statue of
the Great
Emancipator, Obama paid this tribute to President Abraham Lincoln:
"Watching over the
This appeal rang out:
"Remember their struggles.
Remember
the thread that binds us together in common effort, that runs through
every
memorial on this Mall. (All offer a lesson) that there is no obstacle
that can
stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change."
In this week of momentous
historical change
and challenge, my prayer is one of remembrance and thanksgiving for my
ancestors who were patriots in the American Revolution, who were
willing to
give their very lives for
But my prayers today will be
more than
thanksgiving for past achievements. I will earnestly pray for
leadership for
the new president and his cabinet, for vision, purpose and guidance for
"one nation under God." God's smile on
The words of the 44th president
of the
We pray that all citizens will
be renewed
in their faith. Lying at the heart of the dream are responsibility and
cooperation. These are inherent to the dream that "anything is possible
in
c2009 by
Ethelene Dyer
Jones; published Jan. 22, 2009 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville,
GA.
Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Updated August 13,
2009
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