I had the privilege of preaching at a contemporary service in Lee’s Summit yesterday. Our church observes the Sunday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as Racial Justice Day and a lot of our service yesterday morning was focused around Dr. King and his incalculable influence on the Civil Rights movement and the state of racial relations to this day.

In my post this morning, I linked to the YouTube video of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which is, in my opinion, one of the most inspirational speeches of all time. During part of the service, we watched the crescendo of King’s speech and as I always do, I got goosebumps.

I then had the challenge of following his message with a message of my own. To say it was challenging is an understatement. I admire Dr. King and his commitment to his dream, a commitment that ultimately cost him his life. His passion and belief inspired many people to believe in their own capabilities and to more actively work for racial justice in an antiquated society that could not understand the sweeping changes that needed to occur.

I was born almost a decade after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis. The fact that I can sit here and talk about the inspiration he is to me is a testament to his influence and the power of his message. I’m a white kid who grew up in a suburb of a Midwest town. There were less than a dozen African-American kids at my high school. I don’t claim to know any measure of the suffering that has occurred over the many years of prejudice. However, I can promise to make sure that I do my best to see that Dr. King’s message continues to come to fruition.

Even now, 40 years after his death, we are not there yet. We’ve made strides, but we must continue to persevere toward his vision.

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”