The Pastor’s Pen

This past weekend, we remembered the life and witness of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a man who famously spoke of “the arc of the moral universe” bending toward justice. It is a hopeful image, and an important one. But it can also be misunderstood.

The arc does not bend on its own.

History does not drift naturally toward justice like a leaf floating downstream. The arc bends because people push it. It bends because men and women refuse to accept the world as it is and insist, often at great personal cost, on the world as God intends it to be.

Dr. King knew that well. He knew justice required courage, persistence, and a willingness to be misunderstood. He knew it required showing up, again and again, even when progress was slow and setbacks were painful. He trusted God’s promises deeply, but he never confused trust with passivity.

That same call belongs to us.

In our own lives and in our shared life as a community of faith, we are invited not just to hope for a better world, but to participate in God’s work of healing and reconciliation. Sometimes that looks like speaking out. Sometimes it looks like listening carefully. Often it looks like small, faithful acts of love that may never make headlines but still matter deeply.

The good news is that we do not push the arc alone. God is already at work, ahead of us and beside us. Our calling is simply to join in – to keep showing up, to keep loving our neighbors, to keep trusting that even our imperfect efforts can be used by God.

The arc bends because we push. And by God’s grace, it bends still.  

See you Sunday.

Blessings,
Pastor Greg
pastorgreg@lawrencevillepresbyterian.org