Then and Now

Dear friends,

Growing up in mid-century North Central Pennsylvania, people of color were few and far between.  I thought it was because they just didn’t live there, but I later learned that the KKK was meeting in the region where I grew up, and they may have encouraged persons participating in the Great Migration to just “move along.”

Still, my father was a devotee of Abraham Lincoln (and as he was a funeral director, learned most of what there was to know about Lincoln’s funeral and its circumstances), and I grew up immersed in Lincoln’s shadow and principles. For some reason, as a teenager, I listened to Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech on LP as often as I listened to “Cream” and “Eric Burdon and the Animals.”

Now, years later, many of Dr. King’s concerns are still with us, but we have other concerns, and we hear his words differently now.  They play on a larger stage, and we still long for “justice to roll down like waters, and justice like a mighty stream” as many suffer “great trials and tribulations.” And as he said then, let us share in his dream for our country, that “one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

An Epiphany message if ever there was.

Today as we remember the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we pray, Almighty God, by the hand of Moses your servant who led your people out of slavery, and made them free at last: Grant that your church, following the example of your prophet Martin Luther King, may resist oppression in the name of your love, and may strive to secure for all your children the blessed liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Blessings,

CJ+