Imagination

“The eighth gift is imagination.”

“four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come here to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that our nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Our great nation was founded on freedom, freedom of thought, freedom to imagine, and freedom to dream. Our fathers (as Abraham Lincoln put it) used their imagination to create this nation. A place where the skies the limit to what you can imagine, hope, dream, and make into reality. And that dream, that spark of imagination was defended by people who recognized this dream and wished for it to continue united. So my hope for you is that you would use your imagination that it “May nourish your vision and dreams.”