God gave us the Ten Commandments and Jesus taught us among other things “That whatever you do to the least of my brothers that you do unto me.” He also taught us the lesson of the Good Samaritan.

Here is the year of the Lord 2026 and we seemingly still haven’t learned and practiced his teachings.

Yesterday was the fifty-eighth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King and we are still struggling with the same things he preached about and tried to change.

Wars abound, corporate greed and political scandals abound, human rights are being challenged and reversed, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, people fight over land, materials, religion, and ethnicity. Groups like the LGBTQ, the homeless and the infirmed are being marginalized and vilified, climate change is becoming all the more a problem largely due to greed and ignorance, animal rights are also being challenged and people just can’t seem to get along.

I could go on and on but by now I’m sure you get my point.

The sad part is that many justify their actions by using religion for their actions or that somehow the color of their skin makes them superior to others.

Somehow, despite the advancements in technology and what should be a better understanding of things we still seem to be stuck on the same notions and actions that have haunted mankind seemingly since the dawn of time.

I certainly don’t have the answers, but I certainly know what is going on is not what God nor Jesus or MLK wanted for society.

All I can do is do my little part to speak out for justice even if hardly anyone is listening and I can also try to live my life in a way that I believe my God and savior would want me to. That’s all any of us can do and if more of us do that hopefully the world can be a better place for all of us and we won’t end up destroying it.

Yesterday in thinking about MLK and his assassination fifty-eight years ago I recalled that at the time of his death I was in college.

Some time prior to his death my roommate had taped on our dorm room wall the royal flush of cards (spades) because we played so many card games.

The evening of MLK’s death, when I had returned back to our room, I found the king of spades card lying face down on the floor as it had fallen off of the wall.

I read it as a sign that a great black man and leader had died and that God as well as us all had just lost a great person and leader. It also reminded me that after Jesus had died on the cross to save us from our sins, the sky had darkened and the curtains were ripped from the walls of the temple building.

Hopefully we can finally come to terms with our humanity, learn from the lessons of the past and truly embrace and live up to the teachings of Jesus, God and the great leaders like Martin Luther King.