As I began to think about an author or text that has influenced my calling in life it didn’t take me long to look to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He is a man that has inspired me for as long as I can remember. When I think about Dr. King and the life that he lived I’m humbled by his constant desire to serve others and to put others wellbeing before his own. When I think of man that has walked this earth and tried to live their life like Jesus, Dr. King stands out among the crowd.
Dr. King has many writings that have helped to shape the way that I have chosen to live my life. The sermon that he delivered 2 months before he was assassinated, The Drum Major Instinct, is a piece that I look to often and has been the most influential. Dr.
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King deliver the sermon I can’t help but think that he knew that his time on earth was winding down, but he still chose to speak about how he wanted to live a life of service. I’m inspired by the fact that even as he could sense his death soon coming he had the mind to serve others. Once again it makes me think of Jesus dying on the cross and looking to his disciples to care for his mother, placing her needs before his even as he died on the cross.
Dr. King was an educated man and he had received many accolades in his life but none of those matters so much to him that he couldn’t serve others. At one point in the Drum Major Instinct sermon he said, “…The thing that I like about it: giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve…You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be a servant.”1
When I think about the lives that I cross paths with day to day, my prayer is that when those people see me they see me as a servant. Someone who is willing to give of themselves for