no greater joy

On February 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church. He preached from Mark 10:43, where Jesus stated, “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant.” Dr. King offered these observations:

“Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be
that servant.”

Many times we make “promises” to ourselves and sometimes to others that are lofty and, at times, grand, but they are so often misplaced dreams. The man (Jeff) I quoted above is someone I

have been doing life with for 45 years. Actually, there are six of us who have walked these 45 years, together. BUT Jeff is “visibly” the broken one: recovering alcoholic, lost marriage, broken dreams, lost hope. Transformed, openly honest, dreams recovered and hope- filled… Jeff calls our band of brothers “The Tilted Halo Club.” He knows all too well how imperfect we all are. He is the one who makes statements like these:

“The problem with instant gratification is that it takes too long. Private victories precede public victories.”

BUT it is because he is broken that he is the one others are attracted too. Why? Because he has no secrets and because he is not paralyzed by his past. In fact, he embraces it and he steps into it. He is the one who speaks a blessing into the life of his former wife’s now husband and tells him he loves him. He puts his arm around the broken and

the cast-offs and the forgotten because he knows their stories all too well. AND in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr, Jeff serves. He serves the broken and he serves kids and he reminds men everywhere to embrace their failures and to step into the hard stuff. It is healing and it is transformative and it is where love is best expressed. It is where JOY is best experienced.

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

WINSTON CHURCHILL