Free at Last

I recall those grainy, black and white television images of Martin Luther King standing at the podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963, fist raised, animated, speaking to that great assembly.

So many had come from across the country to hear Dr. King’s words but the television in my home had only the picture. Were the words too dangerous?

It was some years later that I heard the words spoken that day, words about broken promises to people of color, words about the “fierce urgency of now. Words that said not to “satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”

The time is not yet here – but it is coming! – When “…. all of God’s children, black and white, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, We are free at last.”

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord,
Josh