“I’ve been to the mountaintop And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.”    MLK

“True integration will be achieved by true neighbors who are willingly obedient to unenforceable obligations.”  MLK

Today is Martin Luther King Day and this memory and words are really is all we need to give to or take from this day of January 20 2025.

For Martin Luther King vocation was more than just a calling to make a living.  Vocation for King, and for each of us is ultimately a call to express yourself out of the truth of yourself in the mission of being yourself in community.  In this age most of the work we do is not necessarily our personal calling, but simply a necessary activity to stay safe, warm, alive, and create sufficient resource to create the family and community’s future. The difficult work of transforming our jobs into a true expression of our vocation might be considered one of those “uninforceable obligations”  that Martin Luther King was talking about. The ministry was his work,  but integration and inclusion of the races made his ministry his vocation and fired a sense of personal obligation to respond to his people and for all people. He could have lived longer raised a family and still have been brilliant local pastor except he had a mission and a purpose, so he elevated his work to vocation.  As a consequence of the danger of this vocation for this truly Christian man, he sadly died the day after his speech of reaching the mountaintop quoted above . He had become one of the consummate orators and activists in history as well as a martyr for his good.

We can thank him today for the life he lived and ultimately sacrificed for to us by following his example of leadership into the loneliness of courageous integrity. We can live our sense of good into the work we do this day and everyday until our presence is more than our jobs. Perhaps showing integrity of good might be through being a forgiving person or showing compassion in ways unexpected. Honoring the Reverend Martin Luther King might be as simple as holding your tongue long enough for that wickedly clever retort to die on your lips when it comes the other activities for which January 20 2025 will be noted in history. Your vocation is your personal energy source of mission that exceeds your job and generation and will be needed to respond to what is coming as a result of this day in history. Do your good.