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So I quote.  P.19.   “It was the most important night of his life, the one he would always think back to in future years when the pressures again seemed to be too great. King had been thrust into civil rights leadership in Montgomery, Alabama, after Rosa Parks had made her brave decision not to move to the back of the bus. The black community formed a new organization to lead a bus boycott, and by default chose as a compromise candidate for its leadership the new minister in town, King, who at the age of 26 looked more like a boy than a man. Growing up in middle-class surroundings, with a kind of inherited religion from his preacher father, he hardly felt qualified to lead a moral crusade.

            As soon as King’s leadership of the movement was announced, the threats from the Ku Klux Klan began. Not only the Klan -within days King was arrested for driving at 30mph in a 25mph zone and thrown into the Montgomery city jail.  The following night, King, shaken by his first jail experience, sat in the kitchen wondering if he could take it any more. Should he resign? It was around midnight. He felt agitated and full of fear.  A few minutes before the phone had rung. “Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess now, and if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out, and blow up your house.”

 King sat staring at an untouched cup of coffee and tried to think of a way out, a way to quickly surrender leadership and resume the serene life of scholarship he had planned for.

 In the next room lay his wife Coretta, asleep, along with their newborn daughter Yolanda. Here is how King remembers it in a sermon he preached:

‘…and I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute. And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep…. And I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any more. I was weak….

And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee. I will never forget it! …. I prayed a prayer, and I prayed our loud that night. I said, “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what is right.  I think I’m right.    I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage.’  ……. And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, “Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world.” …. I heard the voice of Jesus saying to fight on.   He promised never to leave me alone. No, never alone. No, never alone! He promised never to leave me, no never to leave me alone.”

As I read that moving story, and was thinking about this Service tonight, I saw a number of clear parallels. - The moments of crisis which come unexpectedly in our lives- such as when a death occurs without warning;   the sense of overwhelming  inadequacy in those moments;   the recognition that if we are to make it through, the only hope is to find God for ourselves, personally. The need to cast ourselves utterly and completely upon Him – and that without Him coming to us in a real and personal experience, there is not much hope. Martin Luther King described it as a ‘need to know God for myself’ .… and finally the discovery and experience of God speaking within him and assuring him that he would never be alone.

Three nights later, as promised, a bomb exploded on the front door of King’s home, filling the house with smoke and broken glass but injuring no one. King took it calmly; ‘My religious experience a few nights before had given me the strength to face it.’

That really, is the substance of what I want to say tonight – that in the midst of tearing, heart-wrenching, soul  destroying grief – you can call out to God and cast yourself upon Him,  and he will hear, and He will answer, and He will be with you, and you will NEVER be alone.  That’s what St. Paul had discovered 2000 years ago when he faced persecution, when he faced death, when he faced distress, famine, nakedness, peril – even the sword – He was not alone!    “No”, Paul says “in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Christ Jesus who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present ,nor things to come,, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’  (Rom 8; 35, 37)

What Paul is simply saying – is that there is no crisis which God’s love and presence cannot redeem or repair.  God will not leave you; God will not forsake you. Hasn’t Jesus, the Good Shepherd, promised that He would walk with you,- even through the valley of the shadow of death?  Then draw near to Him and let His hand hold you.