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Now here's today's news, discerned differently.

A year ago today, basketball great Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash that also

took the life of his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others. In better news, 11 minors in China

who were trapped some 2,000 feet below ground for two weeks, were rescued last Sunday.

And the FBI announced that 33 missing children in Southern California were found recently.

One of the ways we reflect the God who made us is by instinctively valuing life.

Kobe Bryant's tragic death generated instant headlines. People all over the world

have followed the story of the trapped miners in China. Missing children grieve the hearts not just of their

parents, but for all who know of their plight. Why then do so many in our culture view abortion

as anything other than a grievous tragedy?

Abraham Lincoln's 1865 second inaugural address is widely considered a speech for the ages.

In it, he described the issue that had split the nation. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves,

not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it.

These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest.

All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. Then he stated,

To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents

would rend the Union even by war. The President's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, by contrast, declared that all slaves held in any

part of a state in rebellion against the U.S. shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.

In closing his second inaugural address, the President sought to, finish the work we are in,

by winning the Civil War,

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