Last night I had the honor of participating in our local Martin Luther King, Jr celebration service. This is always a meaningful event because we get to worship God together with a very diverse group of churches. I led the invocation during the gathering. This is what I shared:
Dr. King once spoke the following words:
“No American can afford to be apathetic about the problem of racial justice. It is a problem that meets every man at his front door.”
This is so very true.
However, so very many of us in the world have become so very good at closing our front door and ignoring the pain, the injustice and the brokenness that is right on our front steps.
We have been conditioned to seek a comfort above all things. But I believe this search for comfort can be an enemy to justice.
It is this search that makes us close our doors and shut our eyes to the broken reality of our world. We’d rather live in our imaginary world of comfort that enables apathy than live in the real, broken world that demands our compassion and action.
Dr. King refused to be satisfied with a world that closed its eyes and shut its front doors. He refused to be quiet until every person opened our eyes to the real world around them. Thankfully his legacy lives on through many men and women who have followed his example.
So tonight, let us too follow the example of Dr. King. Let us not avert our eyes from injustice or allow our own souls to slowly die to apathy.
Instead, let us open our eyes to the pain and despair that is present in our world and allow our lives to be defined by generosity, compassion and self-sacrifice.
And let us do so in hope.
Hope that truly one day God will wipe every tear from our eyes.
That death shall truly be no more.
That there will surely no longer be any more mourning or crying or pain.
For one day this way of things will pass away, for behold, God is making all things new.
Until that time, let us pray together the words of Jesus, “May Your kingdom come and your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.”