Quote of the Day (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on ‘The Ultimate Weakness of Violence’)

“Are we seeking power for power’s sake? Or are we seeking to make the world and our nation better places to live? If we seek the latter, violence can never provide the answer. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” ― American civil-rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), Why We Can't Wait (1964)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Robert Murray McCheyne, on Jesus and the World, ‘One Vast Howling Wilderness’)

“You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then he is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, a rock rising above the storm.”— Scottish clergyman Robert Murray McCheyne (1813-1843), letter of Mar. 9, 1843, quoted in Rev. Andrew A. Bonar, Memoir and Remains of the Rev. Robert McCheyne (1844)

(The image accompanying this post was taken by Lorie Shaull on May 26, 2020, showing protesters along and around 38th Street in Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd at the hands of arresting officers the prior day. A memorial was made outside Cup Foods, where Floyd died. If America has felt like “one vast howling wilderness” since Floyd’s death, I hope we will remember Jesus’ message of nonviolent witness as the true path to change in our world.)

Quote of the Day (Leo Tolstoy, on ‘True Religion’)

“True religion consists in establishing the relation of each of us towards the infinite life that surrounds us, the life that unites us to the infinite, and guides us in all our acts.” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence (1910)

Quote of the Day (Martin Luther King Jr., on Nonviolence and What Is ‘Worth Dying For’)

“This method [nonviolence] has a way of disarming the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses. It weakens his morale, and at the same time it works on his conscience, and he just doesn’t know what to do. If he doesn’t beat you, wonderful. If he beats you, you develop the quiet courage of accepting blows without retaliating. If he doesn’t put you in jail, wonderful. Nobody with any sense likes to go to jail. But if he puts you in jail, you go in that jail and transform it from a dungeon of shame to a haven of freedom and human dignity. And even if he tries to kill you, you’ll develop the inner conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for. And I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Speech at the Great March on Detroit,” June 23, 1963