RSS Feed
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Birthday celebration is opportunity for all to recommit to excellence
While time has gone by rather rapidly since the day of the horrible news of her death, the shock and the pain is still with many of us. For indeed, she had been a positive fixture in the lives of countless millions of people of good will throughout America and the world. She, like Dr. King, had been a drum major for peace, and love for generations. Individually and collectively, they had called on America to rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Dr. and Mrs. King had reminded us that there is but one race, the human race, and that everyone "from a base black to a treble white is significant on God's keyboard." In his efforts to encourage African Americans to overcome poverty, racism, and oppression, Dr. King still speaks from eternity and reminds us that "if you can't be a pine on the top of the hill, be a scrub in the valley, but be the best little scrub on the side of the hill! Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, be a trail. If you can't be the sun, be a star. It isn't by size that you win or fail; be the best of whatever you are." Paraphrasing Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dr. King still encourages all of us to strive for moral, academic, vocational, and spiritual excellence in our lives. "If you can write a better book, or preach a better sermon, or build a better mousetrap than your neighbor; even if you build your house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to your door."
Indeed, the committed lives, words, and works of Dr. and Mrs. King created hope in so many people, and restored our faith in democracy and in the practice of Christianity. Not only have they been reunited in heavenly places, but they also were recently re-entombed together at The Martin Luther King Center For Nonviolent Social Change on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia. "I have a dream" that all of us will use this period of celebration and acknowledgement to recommit our lives to moral, academic, vocational, and spiritual excellence; and that we will reach out and help "the least of these" become all they are capable of becoming.
|
for larger version       |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
)
