Week 23: Determination - 'I have a Dream!"

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in." (Rosa Parks)

      On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. She took a seat in the 'white' section of a city bus and refused the driver's order to move to the 'black' section. She said, "The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, but he says, 'Let me have these seats.' And the other three people moved, but I didn't." Because of this protest, she was arrested and the subsequent bus boycott lasted for 381 days.

      Spark by this matter, Martin Luther King Jr., pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, leading a civil rights movement at which result to his arrestment. While in jail, he wrote a 9,000 word statement about racial prejudice. In the book You can be a World Changer by Honors Books publisher wrote, 'He was active in urging blacks to 'protest courageously, and yet with dignity and love''. Because of this non-violence protest, in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill, 'which opened public facilities to black people and desegregated public accommodations'.

Wikipedia reported about his death: [At 6:01 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, 1968, while he was standing on the motel's second floor balcony, King was struck by a single .30 bullet fired from a Remington 760 Gamemaster. The bullet travelled through the right side of his neck, smashing his throat and down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder.]

In his famous 'I have a Dream' speech, a called for racial equality and an end to discrimination on 28th August 1963, key excerpts that I remember most is this:

He said, "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... Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

What is your dream? Does your dream include others? Will others get the benefits from it? Does your dream include God? Is it God's will? If it does, the Good News is... you will achieve it. Understand that God can do the impossible and He is able! Having said that let me remind you- In every noble act, there's a risk to take. For King, he risk his life; for Dr. Thomas Chung, he gave up his comforts life; for Mother Teresa, she choose to live among the poorest of the poor; and for some people that I know well, they choose to buried their academic Degree, Master and even PhD to minister for Christ’s sake.

What is your dream? Do you prepare to sacrifice what you cannot keep, to have what you can?

"All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible." (T.E. Lawrence)