Praying for Peace and Justice on January 19, 2025
Holy One, we pray for peace and justice in our time. Our country looks to a change in leadership and we pray that as the government unfolds it will come to understand that we work best where we can expect and collectively work toward peace and justice in our communities. Holy One, give us and our leaders strength in these uncertain times to hold our focus without rancor or bitterness to make justice and peace a reality for our communities where we live. We ask this in the name of Jesus who is the Christ. Amen
Background
Peace and Justice seem simple words. Easy to understand. Today there are many directions we can look to see where Peace and Justice can be sought. Needing to learn something, I focused my attention on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was suggested Friday evening by our musicians at Carroll Café.
To extend my understanding of Dr King’s legacy, I decided to look deeper into history than I have before. I found his first national address. Still in high school, I may not have known about this address at the time. It was the last speech of a 3-hour program called the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage that civil rights leaders asked the Administration to hold at the Lincoln Memorial. Implementation of the Supreme Court 1954 decision had met strong and vicious opposition in southern regions of the country.
Turnout did not reach the number hoped for, but the newspapers covered the event and that brought the nation’s attention to the opposition. Dr. King’s speech was long and specific. Later It became summarized and known as the “Give Us the Ballot” speech.
Here is the refrain and essence:
“Give us the Ballot,” and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights;
“Give us the Ballot,” and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote write the law on the statute books of the South and bring an end to the dastardly act of the hooded perpetrators of violence;
“Give Us the Ballot,” and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens;
“Give Us the Ballot,” and we will fill our legislative halls with men of goodwill and send to the sacred halls of Congress men who will not sign a “Southern Manifesto” because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice;
“Give Us the Ballot,” and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will do justly and love mercy, and we will place at the head of the Southern States governors who will, who have felt not only the tang of the human but the glow of the Divine;
“Give Us the Ballot,” and we will quietly and non-violently, without rancor or bitterness, implement the Supreme Court’s decision of May seventeenth, 1954.
Dr King continues … In this juncture of our nation’s history, there is an urgent need for dedicated and courageous leadership. If we are to solve the problems ahead and make racial justice a reality, this leadership must be expanded.
These phrases and words are an early statement of our longing for peace and justice today.
