Honoring Dr. King
One event-goer stands during a prayer at the celebration Monday night. Photo by Bill Stevenson/Columbia Basin Herald
MOSES LAKE — On the eve of the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, people gathered to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in Moses Lake.
The church was filled and people were sitting in the foyer for the event at the New Light Missionary Baptist Church in Moses Lake Monday night.
Rev. Raymond Tobin said King was a great American patriot and there was a need to celebrate his work and faith.
“We come to celebrate this man’s 80th birthday, and 41 years since his death,” he said. “That’s not going to stop us from celebrating … I thought about what Martin Luther (King Jr.) stood for and he stood for truth and justice.”
Tobin said King was a great man because he was a man of God. King was also a great American, who believed in freedom and equality for all people.
“He had a deep love for justice, a passion for justice, and a deep seeded aversion to injustice,” Tobin said. “Dr. King spent the last third of his life fighting for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
King fought for truth and justice, and to bring the promise of the Declaration of Independence to all people, Tobin said.
Rev. Murray Bradley, who presented the sermon during the event, told the story of Moses’s crossing of the Red Sea. He said the sea in front them wasn’t the problem it was the Egyptians behind them that were the problem.
“Often life is like this,” he said. “You feel like as soon as you’re moving forward some things from the past creep up.”
He said there are some doors which need to be closed, both on a societal level and on personal level, like how God closed the sea behind the Jews.
“Well a couple of things,” Bradley said. “We still live in a place where some doors need to be closed. Where President-elect Obama did not get some votes not because he was incompetent, not because he was articulate, but there were some who said, ‘I will not vote for him because he was black.’ That’s a door that needs to be closed.”
Bradley said there is still some lingering racism in the country still needing to be shut.
“Tomorrow we will be closing one chapter, and beginning a new chapter,” he said.
Charlie Jones, the president of the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration committee, said he wanted people to remember three words in 2009.
“One is hopeful,” he said. “The other is togetherness and the other one is optimistic.”