January 15, 2024 - Good Morning! It's Monday, January 15.
Did you know that there are two national "service" days each year? One is September 11 and the other . . . is today. In 1994 a bill was sponsored by Congressman John Lewis to encourage Americans to serve their communities, to encourage Americans to make a difference, to encourage Americans to help those less fortunate than themselves. What better person to suggest a day of service than a man who devoted his life to service.
John Lewis was born in 1940, one of ten children of a sharecropper father in Alabama. As a boy he aspired to be a Baptist preacher, but one day he heard Martin Luther King speak - and his life went another way. At the age of 23 he spoke alongside Dr. King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington. Two years later he led a peaceful march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on a day that would become known as "Bloody Sunday". John Lewis was carried from that bridge with a fractured skull, and he carried scars from that day for the rest of his life.
His life ended in 2020, at the age of 80, after a long battle with cancer. His good friend Billy Graham had preceded him in death, but four ex-presidents played a part in the funeral, a funeral held at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta - Dr. King's church. The service began with the crowd rising to its feet and singing a song that has become known as the Black National Anthem. A song whose lyrics are a fitting epitaph to a man of service, a fitting message on this Day of Service.
Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won!
Meet you back here tomorrow,
Bro. David
dmathis@fbccenter.org
