A day to remember and serve

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is precious enough as an annual chance to honor the slain civil rights icon and gauge the still formidable distance between our reality and his dream of a just, tolerant, fair America.

In that spirit, the Greater Wichita Ministerial League will host a “Beyond Tolerance” community worship celebration at noon Monday at Wichita State University’s Metropolitan Complex, 5015 E. 29th St. North, featuring Lance Watson, senior pastor at St. Paul Baptist Church in Richmond, Va.

But it’s also apt that the holiday is becoming equal parts celebration and service.

“It’s not a day off. It’s a day on,” as Wichita City Council member Lavonta Williams told her colleagues last week, echoing a call of the national Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service.

King was a man of words – potent, timeless words that stir us still. But he was also a man of action and activism who said he hoped somebody at his funeral would “say that I tried to love and serve humanity.”

That makes this a good day for south-central Kansans not only to reflect on King’s inspiring legacy but to ask themselves what he characterized as “life’s most persistent and urgent question: What are you doing for others?”

This story was originally published January 17, 2016 at 6:06 PM with the headline "A day to remember and serve."