All of us may not be called to lead a national revolution but what evil are you called to overcome with the good in your personal life?

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
--Romans 12:21
Born in 1929 to a middle-class Georgia family, Martin Luther King, Jr. was scarred early by bigotry. He couldn’t forget the curtains used on the dining cars of trains to separate white from black. “I felt just as if a curtain had come down across my whole life. The insult of it I will never forget.” King focused the public’s attention on his dream of a just and free America. Though he was killed long before his goal could be achieved (“We will soon wear you down by our capacity to suffer”), he moved all Americans a long way forward. King remains a symbol of the dreams, hopes and achievements of Christians and people all over the world that desire the healing of the nations.

• 1929 January 15. Michael Luther King, Jr, later renamed Martin, born to schoolteacher Alberta King and Baptist minister Michael Luther King in Atlanta, Ga. Boyhood in Sweet Auburn district.


• 1948 King graduates from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga., with a B.A.


• 1953 June 18. King marries Coretta Scott in Marion, Ala.. They will have four children: Yolanda Deneise (b. 1955), Martin Luther King III (b. 1957), Dexter (b. 1961), Bernice Albertine (b. 1963).


• 1955 After coursework at New England colleges, King finishes his Ph.D. in systematic theology.


• 1956 January 26. King is arrested for driving 30 mph in a 25 mph zone.
  

January 30. King’s house bombed.

• 1958 While promoting his first book published, “Stride Toward Freedom” (Harper) in a Harlem bookstore, an African American woman stabs him.


• 1963 August 28. 250,000 civil-rights supporters attended the March on Washington. At the Lincoln Memorial, King delivers the famous “I have a dream” speech.


• 1964 December 10. King wins Nobel Peace Prize.


• 1965 January 18. King successfully registers to vote at the Hotel Albert in Selma, Ala. and is assaulted by James George Robinson of Birmingham.


• 1968 April 4. King is assassinated in Memphis Tenn., by James Earl Ray.


• 1986 January 20 is the first national celebration of King’s birthday as a holiday.

Read the Bible book John afresh this month. Perhaps not a national revolution but what evil are you called to overcome with good in your personal life?

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Copyright (c) 2002 Earma Brown: Author, Bible Teacher
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