Good morning…
Yesterday as we pulled up to drop off donated dinner items for the men overcoming homelessness and addiction at Trinity House, I asked my husband Steve, “For how many years have we been doing this every month?” We thought back to when a student in the junior class called to ask if kids from The Lovett School, where Steve serves as chaplain, might make and take meals for the Trinity House men regularly. Together we guessed that it’s been about fifteen or sixteen years since our monthly habit began.
Now up in the middle of the night, I am drawn to go through old yearbooks to see when this mission minded young woman graduated from high school. I enjoy revisiting her senior page in the 2006 yearbook, which means that we have been taking meals to the men since the fall of 2005.
For most of those sixteen plus years, we would take food, high school students, and often our own four kids to downtown Atlanta to enjoy eating our monthly meal with the grateful men. We would all go around the room taking turns sharing stories from our daily lives. Kids and adults. Males and females. Black, brown and white. Those with homes and those without. Those in active recovery and those masking our various addictions. Month after month, we learned fascinating things with one another. Unfortunately COVID has suspended our ability to gather, to share a meal, to exchange our life-giving stories. Still, generous Lovett kids drop food at our home and we take dinner down to the men one Sunday every month.
On our drive downtown through a light flurry of wet snowflakes, I noticed two reminders of the dream envisioned by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. First, I felt solidarity with the church sign above, a sign which reads “Deep in my heart I do believe we shall overcome someday.” Secondly, I discovered an informative sign highlighting the historic legacy of the building which is now home to the dedicated Trinity House men.
Wikipedia tells us: “King was the chief spokesperson for nonviolent activism in the Civil Rights Movement, which protested racial discrimination in federal and state law. The campaign for a federal holiday in King’s honor began soon after his assassination in 1968. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.”
Today as we celebrate the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in what ways is your own daily life shaped by the nonviolent activism embodied by this man of deep faith? There are several simple steps to take. Commit to make and take a meal to someone overcoming adversity. Talk and listen with people different than us, black, brown and white. Live out a deep belief that together with the living Christ we shall overcome someday. There are tons of ways for each of us to actively advance God’s peacemaking movement, day by day.
In what ways do you feel drawn to bless and be blessed in this season of your life?
Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing (Philippians 2:14-16, MSG).
Can’t you almost hear Dr. King echoing this Scripture? “I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing.” Overcoming our many challenges readily and cheerfully, how might we actively become the living proof of God’s peacemaking presence among us?
…Sue…
