Prayer breakfast urges all to have a dream, leave a legacy

Deborah Hampton was presented with a momento for her speech at the MLK Prayer Breakfast Jan. 16. [Click to enlarge]

The event, held at the new Elk's Lodge, brought together leaders and average citizens from throughout the community to remember King's legacy and his dream of equality for all.

"We are here to celebrate his accomplishments as well as his life," said featured speaker Deborah Hampton. "But what does that mean? It means to both dream and to leave a legacy.

"(King) said our personal destiny is tied up with the personal destiny of others. We cannot do this alone.

"What we do for others... is our personal legacy," she said. "When you leave this life, you need to leave something behind."

A legacy, she said, is passed on from generation to generation. She praised her own parents, Joe B. and Mildred McNeal, for the legacy they had passed on to their children.

Legacies, she noted, can be positive or negative. Slavery, for example, was a negative legacy, and continues in the world today, where the UN estimates 27 million people are held in bondage worldwide, a number greater than all the slaves held in the United States prior to the Civil War.

Legacies also can be positive, such as the legacy President Obama has created. "We'd be told, 'no we can't'," she said, "but now, we're told, 'yes, we can'."

But to leave a legacy, she said, "there must first be a dream.

"Dr. King's dream is a model to help us acknowledge that we have our own dreams, and that they can be passed on from generation to generation.... He inspired us," not only during his time of fighting for basic human rights for all people, "but for future generations," she said.

"To leave a legacy, you must have a dream, to seed a thought... and that seed must go through germination" for it to flower and grow, she said.

At the same time, she said, Dr. King "knew that it's not enough to just have a dream. You must talk it and you must walk it."

Dr. King, she said, believed that every person had the power to lift themselves out of negative circumstances. "He encouraged all people to live up to their potential.

"We can start today," to fulfill our dreams and create a legacy for future generations, she said, "to live up to our potential and shape our destinies, one person at a time."

Dr. King's goals were "simple, but breathtaking.

"Not everyone will have the same dream, but if we tie them all together, what an amazing force," she said.

And his dream, combined with that of everyone else, can "complete the liberation of mankind," Hampton said.

The breakfast featured a number of prayers from local religious leaders.

Vince Gordon of the Church of Christ, offered a prayer for the country, and asked God's blessing and protection on the members of the armed services fighting in distant lands.

Harold Henderson, retired pastor of the First Congregational Church, noted in his prayer that "as a nation, it seems we have forgotten what it means to be a people of God," and urged those attending to renew their commitment to God's ideals on a day in which "we remember a man who lost his life in pursuit" of those ideals.

Gregg Jones, of Liberty Christian Fellowship Church, offered a prayer for the family, which he noted is under attack, due to divorce and children disobeying their parents and fighting with siblings.

Pastor Diane Jones of Liberty Christian Fellowship Church also offered a prayer of thanksgiving, Truman Parker of First Congregational Church offered a prayer of unity, Dana Williams of Love Abiding Church offered the introductory invocation, and Fr. Julio Vicente, the new priest for Our Lady of Good Counsel parish, provided the benediction, noting that "everyone has dignity in the eyes of the Father."

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