Love Never Forgets

Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Stretches of time sometimes makes it difficult for believers to believe that God has not forgotten. Exactly one year ago today I started a new ministry. I had no way of knowing how it would affect my life or the lives of anyone else. Deep within, we can envision and we can imagine but if we are not willing to make the first step nothing will manifest. As we approach the celebration of Black History Month, I am reminded of the visionaries who lived out their vision, inspired by God our first visionary expressed by one word, Love. It was during his Crozer Seminary years (specifically mentioned as a shout out to the City of Chester) that Martin Luther King Jr., expressed the vision of “a society in which all men and women, will be controlled by the eternal love of God.”  Thank you God for deep within, you provide the vision. Let us not forget that it is your Love that drives the vision and by your Love that we live into its manifestation. When God’s vision is our vision, we can be encouraged that in every effort great or small, known or unknown it is that same Love which never forgets.

Can a woman forget her nursing child… See I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands…

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr

…Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Luke 2:41-52

The following are excerpts from one of Dr. Kings earliest recorded sermons given on February 28, 1954 at 2nd Street Baptist Church in Detroit Michigan, titled “Rediscovering Lost Values.” **

Now, the real thing that is to be seen here is this: that the parents of Jesus realized that they had left, and that they had lost a mighty precious value. They had sense enough to know that before they could go forward to Nazareth, they had to go backward to Jerusalem to rediscover this value. (That’s right) They knew that. They knew that they couldn’t go home to Nazareth until they went back to Jerusalem. (Come on)

And I think, my friends, that that is the thing that has happened in America. That we have unconsciously left God behind. Now, we haven’t consciously done it; we have unconsciously done it. You see, the text, you remember the text said that Jesus’ parents went a whole day’s journey not knowing that he wasn’t with them. They didn’t consciously leave him behind. (Well) It was unconscious; went a whole day and didn’t even know it. It wasn’t a conscious process. You see, we didn’t grow up and say, “Now, goodbye God, we’re going to leave you now.” The materialism in America has been an unconscious thing. Since the rise of the Industrial Revolution in England, and then the invention of all of our gadgets and contrivances and all of the things and modern conveniences—we unconsciously left God behind. We didn’t mean to do it.

Go out and be assured that that God is going to last forever. (Yes) Storms might come and go…..

If we are to go forward, (Oh yes) we must go back and rediscover these precious values: (Well) that all reality hinges on moral foundations (Lord have mercy) and that all reality has spiritual control. (Yes) God bless you. (Amen, Amen, Amen)

**The full sermon can be read at : The Martin Luther King Jr, Research and Education Institute of Stanford University

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_rediscovering_lost_values/