In commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, UNMC Today will feature a series of photos and quotations from the civil rights leader. In today’s excerpt, King talks about the dimensions to a complete life.
The series will culminate Jan. 20 at noon with a presentation by Diane Ariza, Ph.D., assistant dean of multicultural affairs at Albion College in Albion, Mich., and former director of multicultural affairs at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Free pizza and soda will be available for the first 300 guests at the Storz Pavilion. A live videotape presentation of Dr. Ariza’s presentation will be available for overflow audience members at the Wittson Hall Amphitheater. A sign language interpreter will be present to translate for audience members who are deaf or hearing impaired.
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Dr. King with his wife, Coretta. |
“There are three dimensions to a complete life: length, breadth and height. The length of life is the inward concern for one’s own welfare. It is that inward concern that causes one to push forward, to achieve his or her own goals and ambitions, develop our inner powers and a rational and healthy self-interest.
The breadth of life is the outward concern for the welfare of others. A man has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow confine of his own individual concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. God needs men and women who will ask ‘What will happen to humanity if I don’t help? What will happen to the civil rights movement if I don’t participate? What will happen to my city if I don’t vote? What will happen to the sick if I don’t visit them?”
And the height of life is the upward reach for God. I want to say that we should search for him. We were made for God, and we will be restless until we find rest in him. This is the personal faith that has kept me going. I’m not worried about the future, even on this race question. And when you get all three of these together, you can walk and never get weary.”
Excerpt from “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” in A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson and Peter Holloran (Warner Books, 1998).
Photo from The Life and Death of Martin Luther King Jr., by James Haskins, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1977.