A Prayer by Martin Luther King (1953)
“Grant us Visions That Shall Lift Us”
O God our eternal Father, we praise thee for gifts of mind with which thou hast endowed us. We are able to rise out of the half-realities of the sense world to a world of ideal beauty and eternal truth. Teach us, we pray Thee, how to use the great gifts of reason and imagination so that it shall not be a curse but a blessing. Grant us visions that shall lift us from worldliness and sin into the light of thine own holy presence. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.
From his final speech: A Word for Today
On April 3, 1968 King told the audience that, if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the present. “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…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.”
All Of God’s Children….
“Now is the time to make real the promises
of democracy.”
