On today, I feel you must take time to sit back and remember. We must remember the dark unfortunate history of racism in our country. But more than that we must remember that it was the Church that took the strongest stand against this injustice. Every year on this day I try to listen to the famous speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. for who we commemorate. This excerpt really struck me this morning when reading it:

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. *We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only."* We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Rev. King was quoting Amos 5:24 (ASV) In this chapter God is angry with his people for making empty rituals of religion and empty religion of his rituals. Let's look at it in context of some verses around it:

Amos 5:21-27
21 I hate, I despise your feast days, And I will not smell in your solemn assemblies.
22 Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: Neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.
23 Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; For I will not hear the melody of thy viols.
24 But let judgment run down as waters, And righteousness as a mighty stream.
25 Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?
26 But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, The star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.
27 Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, Saith the Lord, whose name is The God of hosts.

My prayer is that today we are convicted, inspired, humbled and encouraged. That we not make empty rituals of what God has given us and we not make empty religion of our rituals, but that we take seriously the call to the hard narrow road of a follower of Christ.