We thank You for Your church, founded upon Your Word, that challenges us to do more than sing and pray, but go out and work as though the very answer to our prayers depended on us and not upon You. Help us to realize that humanity was created to shine like the stars and live on through all eternity. Keep us, we pray, in perfect peace. Help us to walk together, pray together, sing together, and live together until that day when all God’s children – black, white, red, brown and yellow — will rejoice in one common band of humanity in the reign of our Lord and of our God, we pray. Amen.
— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This week as we have celebrated the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his “ I Have a Dream” speech comes to mind. Among the statements he made was: "I have a dream today. ... I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, ..."
— I Have A Dream Speech, 1963, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Write down your dreams for our Great Plains United Methodist Conference. Dream big, dream deep, dream with hope for what God can do. Afterward, you are invited to pray over and for your dreams, asking God to guide you as you make your dreams reality.
God, we thank You for the inspiration of Jesus. Grant that we will love You with all our hearts, souls, minds, and love our neighbors as we love ourselves, even our enemy neighbors. And we ask You, God, in these days of emotional tension, when the problems of the world are gigantic in extent and chaotic in detail, to be with us in our going out and our coming in, in our rising up and in our lying down, in our moments of joy and in our moments of sorrow, until the day when there shall be no sunset and no dawn. Amen.
— Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Photo source: public domain through the National Archives
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