Hope Is Sustained By Love
January 17, 2022 MLK Day
Morgan Overton, Coretta Scott King Watercolor
INVOCATION
G-d of Hope enter here. Give us dreams and visions.
STORY
Our hope is sustained by those who love us and those whom we love. Dr. King was loved by a good woman who was full of hope. Without her hope, there would be no MLK Day to celebrate.
C-SPAN: Coretta Scott King Shares How MLK Day Became a Holiday (1986 Interview)
BREATH PRAYER
INHALE
Ev Echad (One Heart)
EXHALE
Derech Echad (One Way)
Jeremiah 32:39 Orthodox Jewish Bible
A SONG OF PRAISE
from “Advice for Living" by Dr. Martin Luther King 1957
Love is creative and redemptive.
Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys.
The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method is bitterness and chaos; the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community.
Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that.
Yes, love—which means: understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill,
even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.
BENEDICTION
Dr. King said, “Someone must have sense enough and religion enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love.”
Let your hope be a chain breaker. Let your love sustain the hope of those you love.
Selah.
Ok, so I'm a biblical Hebrew nerd. In the breath prayer heart is "Lev." It is made up of two Hebrew letters. A "lamed" and a "bet" which is sometimes pronounced "vet" depending on whether or not a little dot is placed inside the letter. Anyway, the last letter of the Torah is a "lamed" and the first letter of Torah is a "bet/vet" so some people (including me) like the way the word lev brackets the Torah because Hebrew is read right to left.