By: Bobby Walker
I don’t know what the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday means to most people. For so many of our young people, it is simply a wonderful day off from school, and adults may have a welcome break from work, as well. In recent years, we have all been challenged to make it a day of service to honor the life of the inspirational activist. Across the country, Americans took up that challenge this past Monday and lent a helping hand to people and organizations in need.
While this trend of national service leads us in a positive direction, for me, this day is so much more than that. Dr. King’s legacy has never been about the many marches he led, the threats on his life that he endured, or the laws he helped to get passed to ensure civil rights and equal treatment for all Americans. Instead, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day has been a personal challenge for me to be a better person and to live my life with the full intent of helping others. I remain eternally grateful for Dr. King’s qualities and give thanks for the impact his determination has made on my life.
So, I will not write of his many marches, his commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience, his untimely death, or his famous “I Have a Dream Speech.” Instead, I want to share with you some lines from another one of his famous speeches. Dr. King returned to Memphis on April 3, 1968, the night before his assassination, to lead a renewed march to protest the city’s unfair treatment of its sanitation workers. Here he delivered, what I consider, the most deeply personal and most touching speech of his short lifetime. It has been called “The Mountaintop Speech” as Dr. King used the biblical image of Moses leading the Hebrew people to the Promised Land and peering over the mountaintop into a land he would not be able to enter before his death.
Here are a few excerpts from that speech:
“As you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of general and panoramic view of the whole human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, ‘Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?’
Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, ‘If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.’ Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That’s a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world.”
What has moved me most was Dr. King’s challenge to EVERYONE in the room. He had already praised the sanitation workers for their courage in going on strike, but he turned to the other people in the room and challenged them to join the protest.
“Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.
That’s the question before you tonight. Not, ‘If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?’ The question is not, ‘If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?’ ‘If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?’ That’s the question.
Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.”
“A kind of dangerous unselfishness”… these words speak to me and challenge me in ways that are difficult to express. This challenge to live a life purely to help others has formed the basis of my personal and professional dealings with others. Dr. King’s assessment that the world is in need of people who live a life helping others resonates with me today. News headlines seem to remind us that our country is becoming deeply divided along many different lines: political party, socioeconomic status, race, religion and more. I challenge all readers to accept Dr. King’s summons to live an unselfish life that is concerned about the love and care you can show someone else, not matter who they are. I believe he was correct when he said, “We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.”
