Today’s Life-LineS:

Let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like a mighty stream. ~ The prophet Amos 5:24

Race prejudice, a universal human ailment, is the most recalcitrant aspect of the evil in man. ~  Reinhold Niebuhr

I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism.

A lie cannot live. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the Hebrew language one word denotes both . . . “the crime of murder” and “the sin of insult”. “Bloodshed,” in Hebrew, is the word that denotes both murder and humiliation. The law demands: one should rather be killed than commit murder. Piety demands: one should rather commit suicide than offend a person publicly. It is better, the Talmud insists, to throw oneself alive into a burning furnace than to humiliate a human being publicly.

Racism is “a treacherous denial of the existence of God.” Faith in God is not simply an afterlife insurance policy. Racial or religious bigotry must be recognized for what it is: satanism, blasphemy. . .

How many disasters do we have to go through in order to realize that all of humanity has a stake in the liberty of one person; whenever one person is offended, we are all hurt. What begins as inequality of some inevitably ends as inequality of all. . .

One hundred years ago the emancipation was proclaimed. It is time for the white man to strive for self emancipation, to set himself free of bigotry, to stop being a slave to wholesale contempt, a passive recipient of slander.

~ Abraham Heschel, “Religion and Race,” January 14, 1963

The country is in deep trouble. We’ve forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that’s the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.

~ Cornel West

Click here for an article worth your time reading: Two Friends, Two Prophets: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King Jr. by Susannah Heschel