Martin Luther King Jr. and all of us have a dream

A Christian Science perspective.

I had read about Martin Luther King Jr. We had talked about him in school. But all that was nothing compared to the first time I heard him speak. While driving, I came across a radio station playing his famous “I have a dream” speech. And I didn’t just hear about his dream. I felt it. It was more than words. There was tremendous heart, and that heart helped move humanity in a better direction, with more justice for African-Americans and more real goodness for everyone.

In that kind of heart lies the seed of human progress. In a way, I learned more of this by what I felt when I heard his speech. That heart is what I keep finding breaks down limits in our lives by opening doors to our divine, infinite source. And we all have hearts that dream – that hope, yearn, and desire more good for us and for everyone.

The world needs this heavenward hope. A Bible verse encourages us: “Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street” (Lamentations 2:19).

God-based hope and prayer enable something special to happen. We receive the vision and ideas that lead to better careers, safety, and health. This then makes for improved individuals and communities. God has messages for all of us that break human limits in our consciousness and lives.

The Bible introduces this divine message as the Christ. It’s what enveloped Christ Jesus. It enabled him to do profound works in lifting limits off people, showing disease, lack, and wrongdoings to have been deceiving illusions of their God-given lives. St. Paul, in several letters, exhorted others to follow the path Jesus set for us. For example, he said, “[L]et your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:27). There’s a spiritual ideal that our hearts are drawn to and that then reveals a great goodness about our lives.

Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness. The Christ is incorporeal, spiritual, – yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” p. 332).

This God-sent idea of life has sent me hope on many occasions – bringing ways to reconcile with others, new perspectives when needed, and inspiration for enabling a better world around me.

Heaven-based hopes move us. We receive the Christ-message that strengthens hearts, broadens minds, invigorates bodies, and redeems lives. Thoughts based on a sense of the presence and activity of the divine nature constituting our lives take us to the best outcomes for everything and begin to transform our universe. Let’s dream big!

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