Friday, January 20, 2017

Inauguration Day


I didn't bother to watch the coronation today.  Instead, I thought of Martin Luther King Jr.




“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture of their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land. ‘And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.’ I still believe that We Shall overcome!"   

-- Martin Luther King Jr., from his Nobel Prize speech, 1964


I understand that the Psalms were quoted at the Inauguration ceremony.
This one has always been my favorite.

Psalm 146

1 Praise the Lord.[a]
      Praise the Lord, my soul.
2 I will praise the Lord all my life;    
      I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
3 Do not put your trust in princes,    
      in human beings, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;    
      on that very day their plans come to nothing.
5 Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,    
      whose hope is in the Lord their God.
6 He is the Maker of heaven and earth,    
      the sea, and everything in them—    
      he remains faithful forever.
7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed    
      and gives food to the hungry.
      The Lord sets prisoners free,
8 the Lord gives sight to the blind,
      the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,    
      the Lord loves the righteous.
9 The Lord watches over the foreigner    
      and sustains the fatherless and the widow,    
      but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.
10 The Lord reigns forever,    
      your God, O Zion, for all generations.
      Praise the Lord.

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