04 April 2008
MLK and the Good Samaritan
On this day, the 40th anniversary of Dr. King's tragic death in Memphis, we pause to remember a man who gave his life (as did Jesus of Nazareth) to show the world that love, not violence, is the most powerful force in the universe.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring, (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967).
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1 comment:
So much wisdom and truth in that paragraph; every day I strive to be the hands of Christ, but how foolish am I to think that my hands who occasionally just “fling a coin to a beggar” and never speak to them again is somehow comparable the hands that healed, embraced, and eventually were nailed.
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