Thoughts on Martain Luther King's experience of the King

Whatever personal imperfections Martin Luther King had—and there were some substantial ones—King's life and mission were driven by a Biblically-informed vision of God and man. In January of 1956 King was receiving 30 hate letters a day. He was averaging 25 obscene phone calls a day. Death threats were normal. After being awakened again by one of these calls in the middle in Montgomery, Alabama, of the night King went to the kitchen and put his head down on the table and prayed,

"Oh, Lord, I'm down here trying to do what is right. But, Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now. I'm afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I can't face it alone."

He tells this story in his book Strength to Love, and says that what happened next was life-changing for him. It seemed as if an inner voice was speaking to him with quiet assurance:
"Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And, lo, I will be with you, even unto the end of the world."

He saw lightening flash. He heard thunder roar. It was the voice of Jesus telling him still to fight on. And

"he promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone, No, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone . . ."

For the first time in his life God was profoundly real and personal to him. The rest of his life, with all its imperfections, was stamped by this experience.

My Thoughts
King's Experience of the KING is telling. It tells us of the grace that strengthens us in the weakness of our humanity. It tells us of the vision that "keeps us keeping on" when the darkness closes in. Truly God is powerfully present in all our realities may we never believe the lie that darkness can banish light. For the light of one moment before the Lord can change out trajectory and send us for a jail cell to ready to shrink back, to a balcony in Memphis ready to die. The place where we reach God's glory and our end meet. God's eternal Glory is always moving on! The resilient glory that even in our imperfections, shine forth for generations. We may end but God's glory moves on in the lives of those who's hearts have been touched by the unseen hand that moved in our life.

Humility through prayerful encounter.
This is humility that makes us useful to God, a devotion so clearly fixed we do not see that the world was forever changed by our life. A life of self-forgetfulness found in the blinding but beautiful light that makes our life beautiful. May our hearts make us forgetful and our lives are captured by another. Blindness in beholding the glory of God and Lostness in Trusting the Plan of God is the two necessary aspects of a self-forgetful soul.

Blinded by beauty
God's light is the ministry of his word and Spirit. His Word and Spirit"s ministry results in hearing bringing strength and to empowerment to a humble soul. God's word informs us as the the beuatry of God the spirit sets us before him and there we hear and are renewed. The beauty is in the object we behold. Our blindnessis is his beauty captured in our eyes.

The Chain to blindness is a devotion to behold.
Trust binds us to seek. Seeking bids us to hear. Hearing blinds us to be, being brings us to do. Being and doing is the divine life of man before God. The Christian life is a life of beholding the king and becoming like him. The process to behold is what the psalmist called “the accent”. A man before the God of unsearchable light is blinded to the good of there own doing. If only for the glory of God, we do not know the existent for what our doing will do. Our actions that echo in eternity are unknown to us, only offering from a self-forgetting soul. This is being his light, reflecting his glory. To use another metaphor, it is a heart burning in worship and devotion, the flickering flames of love. We are captured by the one worthy to hold us captive, for he is captivating, and seeing him burns us ALIVE! So in Our doing we are burning. All we see is flames of love and a vision of God, the evidence of his Beauty Truth and goodness. It is why even in our doing; his light can shine with the light of 10,000 suns. This is a making, our reason for being and doing, blind being and beautiful doing.

Loose your self!
Calling all earth shakers, calling all world changers, behold the KING! Loose yourself in him, and be lost. This kind of lostness is a glorious journey of never knowing what God may do next. So when asked what are you doing with your life? Say Worshiping! When asked where are you going? Say, I don’t know but more faith awaits me there? People may think your touched agree with them for you have been touched by a vision of God. A vision that make you forget who you are and remember who he is. A vision of God so big we get lost in it. We loose our self in finding him and find our identity, lost in him. This is the Christian identity as, “I am a lover and I am loved! Lost but found!

-Trust - seek - Hear - Be - Do-

And as you burn, in your burning know the world will never be the same.

Big or little changes do not matter - Burning Matters!

Quoted from Stephen Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., (New York: Mentor, Penguin Group, 1982) p. 85. cited from John Piper reflections at http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/1994/860_What_is_Man/