I HAVE A DREAM
Martin Luther King
| Many, many centuries ago, out on
a lonely, obscure island called Patmos, a man by the name of John caught
a vision of the new Jerusalem descending out of Heaven from God. One of
the greatest glories of this new city of God that John sow was its completeness.
It was not partial and one-sided, but it was complete in all three of its
dimensions. And so, in describing the city in the twenty-first book of
Revelation, John says this: "The length and the breadth and the height
of it are equal." In other words, this new city of God, this city of ideal
humanity, is not an unbalanced entity but it is complete on all sides.
Now John is saying something quite significant here. For so many of us the book of Revelation is a very difficult book, puzzling to decode. We look upon it as something of a great enigma wrapped in mystery. And certainly if we accept the book of Revelation as the record of actual historical occurrences it is a difficult book, shrouded with impenetrable mysteries.. There are three dimensions of any complete life: length, breadth, and height. The length of life as we shall think of it here is not its duration or its longevity, but it is the push of a life forward to achieve its personal ends and ambitions. It is the inward concern for one's welfare. The breadth of life is the outward concern for the welfare of others. The height of life is the upward reach to God. These are the three dimensions of life, and without the three being correlated, working harmoniously together, life is incomplete. Life is something of a great triangle. At one angle stands the individual person, at the other angle stand other persons, and at the top stands the Supreme, Infinite Person, God. These three must meet in every individual life if that life is to be complete. Now let us notice the length of life. I have said that this is the dimension of life in which the individual is concerned with developing his inner powers. It is that dimension of life in which the individual is concerned with developing his inner powers. It is that dimension of life in which the individual pursues personal ends and ambitions. This is perhaps the selfish dimension of life, and there is such a thing as moral and rational self-interest. If one is not concerned about himself he cannot be totally concerned about other selves. Some years ago a learned rabbi, the late Joshua Liebman, wrote a book entitled Peace of Mind. He has a chapter in the book entitled "Love Thyself Properly." In this chapter he says in substance that it is impossible to love other selves adequately unless you love your own self properly.. To carry this to one extreme, if it falls your lot to be a streetsweeper, sweep streets as Raphael painted pictures, sweep streets as Michelangelo carved marble, sweep streets as Beethoven composed music, sweep streets as Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, "Here lived a great street-sweeper who swept his job well.". The breadth of the life is that dimension of life in which we are concerned about others. An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity... As Long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good check-up at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent.. Finally, there is a third dimension. Some people never get beyond the first and tow dimension s of life. They master the first two. They master the first two. They develop their inner powers; they love humanity, but they stop right there. They end up with the feeling that man is the end of all things and that humanity is God. Philosophically or theologically, many of them would call themselves humanists. They seek to live life without a sky. They find themselves bogged down on the horizontal plane without horizontal plane without being integrated on the vertical plane. But if we are to live the complete life we must reach up and discover God. H.G.Wells was right: "The man who is not religious begins at nowhere and ends to nothing." Religion is like a mighty wind that breaks down doors and makes that possible and even easy which seems difficult and impossible. Something should remind us once more that the great things in this universe are things that we never see. You walk out at night and look up at the beautiful stars as they bedeck the heavens like swinging lanterns of eternity, and you think you can see all. Oh, no. You can never see the law of gravitation that holds them there. . In a real sense everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see. Plato was right: "The visible is a shadow cast by the invisible." And so God still around... Love yourself, if that means rational, healthy, and moral self-interest. You are commanded to do that. That is the length of life. Love your neighbour as you love yourself . You are commanded to do that. That is the breadth of life. But never forget that there is a first and even greater commandment , "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind." This is the height of life. And when you do this you live the complete life. |