When is it time to push, and when is it time to rest? The New Year is a time when our culture tells us to push on with those new resolutions, but winter is a time our bodies may want to slow down and, if not hibernate, at least sleep more. If you want to do your best work, try resting more. You may find you actually get more done.
God’s gospel is peace. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on that holy ground. But what do our children see, hear, and feel about militarism from their churches?
As Martin Luther King Jr. became nationally celebrated, his legacy as a radical was also sanitized. This year and always, communities of faith need to tell the truth about King.
On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as we revere Dr. King, let us remind ourselves of a public love that is rooted in a patriotic devotion to creating a more perfect union. Public love is a call to concrete action, or as King said, “a willingness to go to any length to restore community.”
Now that we’re well into 2021, we’ve discovered that all the problems of 2020 didn’t just magically go away, alas. We can expect 2021 to maintain continuity with 2020, and in fact, carry forward the trends that have led us to where we are today.
In his Letter, King saw with clarity from a jail cell what many in Birmingham could not or would not perceive in the social order’s status quo predicated on segregation and inequality. I prayerfully hope that we will experience indictment anew from King’s Letter as a people gathering to celebrate King’s witness just weeks after early January’s national turmoil. The myopic habits to exclude and occlude others in society are still strong in the American psyche and certainly proved pernicious in the last few years—and devastatingly so in recent weeks.