The message at Sunday’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial service was a lesson of loving one another, and living into one’s faith and in the present.
“We are called to help the poor in financial resources, as well as the poor in spirit,” said guest speaker The Rev. Diane Curry Randolph, pastor of the Freeport, Grace and Trinity United Methodist churches.
“We Christians are called to help release the oppressed in spirit as well as the oppressed in society. And so much so, we are called to help even these of our Christian sisters and brothers who are spiritually blind, as well as blind in the eyes.”
The Allegheny Valley Association of Churches and the Alle-Kiski NAACP sponsored this year’s service, which was held at the Christ Anglican Church in Harrison. The memorial service has been held every year since King was assassinated in 1968.
AVAC is a coalition of 54 area churches.
“They all serve the same God,” said Karen Snair, church association executive director.
The event also serves as a fundraiser for the group’s MLK scholarships awarded each year to high school seniors. More than 200 teens have been awarded scholarships since the program’s inception. Five students — one from Kiski Area, and two from Apollo-Ridge and Highlands high schools — were awarded scholarships last year.
Recipients are selected through factors like scholastic achievement, community involvement and the need for financial assistance. The scholarship amount varies.
“It gives a young adult a privilege of being able to go to college, to brighten their future,” said Selena Foster, associate pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Brackenridge. “It’s a start. At one time, it was hard for people on lower incomes to be able to go to college and get the skills and learning they may need for a career.”
The more than 50 attendees participated in often thoughtful moments, like listening to musical selections from Arnold’s the Rev. Darryl Manley, Harrison’s Guardian Angels Choir and Christ Our Hope’s the Rev. John Bailey, and Merrie Beth and Greg Barton.
Together, everyone sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “We Shall Overcome.” Larry Rowe of Arnold led a reading of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
King’s message remains important today, Snair said.
“We still have a ways to go,” Foster said.
Randolph encouraged people to care for one another as God called on them to do.
“As the peoples of the Earth will come together to be the holy people of God,” Randolph said. “People, in all their diversity, will bring into heaven the glory and honor of the nations, and unique culture, which is God-given.
“…We need to seek and receive one another in the unique beauty of our difference.”