The whole concept of the Imago Dei (or)…the ‘Image of God’ is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected…
This gives him a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him dignity.
And we must never forget this…there are no gradations in the Image of God.
Every man from a treble white to a bass black
is significant on God’s keyboard,
precisely because every man is made in the Image of God.
One day we will learn that.
We will know one day that God made us to live together as brothers
and to respect the dignity and worth of every man.
– Martin Luther King, Jr. from his “The American Dream” sermon, July 4, 1965
Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.
~C. S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory
We are united by our joint creation as the Image of God. Not one of us reflects God more than another but together form His body and His kingdom on earth.
Dr. King’s words and wisdom continue to inform us of our shortcomings more than 50 years later as we flounder in our flaws and brokenness; so many question not only the validity of equality of all people of all shades, but even doubt the existence of a God who would create a world that includes the crippled body, the troubled mind, the questioned gender, the genetically challenged, the human beings never allowed to draw a breath.
Yet we are all one, a composition made up of white and black keys too often discordant, sometimes dancing to different tempos, on rare occasions a symphony. The potential is there for harmony, and Dr. King would see and hear that in his time on earth.
Perhaps today we unite only in our shared tears, shed for the continued strife and disagreements, shed for the injustice that results in senseless killings, shed for our inability to hold up one another as holy in God’s eyes as His intended creation, no matter our color, our origin, our defects, our differences and similarities.
We can weep together on this day, knowing, as Dr. King knew, a day will come when the Lord God will wipe tears away from all faces — all colors just as they are.
There are no longer gradations in who God is nor who He made us to be.
Barnstorming 
Amen.
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Perfectly timed urgent reminder with appropriate photos and text acknowledging Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s endeavors to change the way we view and treat our brothers and sisters to achieve equality and justice among all people regardless of color, gender or Creed. He did this by espousing the concept of ‘non-violence.’ Dr. King and many others (known and unknown) were also maligned and martyred for their beliefs and actions.
Indeed, the soil of our common earth – our temporary home – is drenched with human blood and our varied, unique environment disappears every day as tragic evidence that we have failed miserably to believe, to accept the fact that our Father, Creator of all that we see and share together — human beings, animal life, the life-giving sustenance of our environment — for which we are responsible to care for and protect as stewards.
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