My Four Little Children

I watched the movie The Help for the first time December 2011 on an airplane flying home from Ethiopia with our newly adopted 3 year old daughter.  I've seen movies depicting prejudice and that time period before and it's always appalled me, but, I can tell you sitting there on the airplane watching that movie, headphones on with my black daughter asleep in my lap, it felt different!

This time it was personal.  Really, really personal.

Imagine if your child were being discriminated against! 

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I share in your dreams Dr. King!

My four little children:

 
That verse he quoted at the end is from Isaiah 40:4-5 and plainly reads "all flesh" (or "all mankind" in some verses).  God clearly does not see any one race or color as superior to another.  How did/do some professing Christians get it so wrong?

And how far have we come since that speech in 1963?  What would Dr. King say to us if he could see things today?

I say we've come pretty far, but not far enough.  We can do better.  All of us can do something to help.