MOUNT VERNON – Bishop Edward T. Cook of Ohio North First walked to the podium at Ariel Arena on Monday to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy and spread his message at Mount Vernon Nazarene University’s MLK Day Celebration Breakfast.
“With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope,” Cook said, repeating King Jr’s quote taken from his “I have a Dream” speech in Washington D.C. on Aug. 28, 1963.
“The quotation also serves as the theme of the overall design of the King Memorial, which realizes the metaphorical mountain and stone among other civil rights milestones,” Cook added.
Also at the breakfast, Mount Vernon Mayor Matt Starr, Kenyon College President Dr. Julie Kornfield, the Rev. Tavaris E. Taylor and Gambier Mayor Leeman Kessler all offered their own testimonies of hope.
Cook said King saw sin primarily in structural terms from the time that he was first conscious of the world around him; shared by the structural reality of racial segregation.
“Despair is defined as the complete loss or absence of hope, be so utterly burdened and without strength as to succumb to affliction the source of which does not matter,” Cook said.
The answer to the predecessor of sadness and depression? Hope.
King knew hope as an attribute when trying to accomplish any goal.
“Hope in the darkest times is what keeps us moving forward toward our goal, whether that goal is to end a centuries long injustice or something much smaller in scope, hope is our launching pad,” Cook said.
“It is the light that illuminates our path. It is hope that keeps us moving forward. When all seems lost or the finish line seems impossible, impossibly far away, Dr. King Jr. knew that to have hope and to give hope were essential to the success of the civil rights movement and it is no less essential today.”