Broken Heartedness

This is an excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s sermon, "Guidelines for a Constructive Church," given on June 5, 1966 at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

"...And Sunday after Sunday, week after week, people come to God's church with broken hearts. They need a word of hope. And the church has an answer--if it doesn't, it isn't a church. The church must say in substance that brokenheartedness is a fact of life. Don't try to escape when you come to that experience. Don't try to repress it. Don't end up in cynicism. Don't get mean when you come to that experience. The church must say to men and women that Good  Friday is a fact of life.The church must say to people that failure is a fact of life. Some people are only conditioned to success. They are only conditioned to fulfillment. Then when the trials and the burdens of life unfold, they can't stand up with it. But the church must tell men that Good Friday's as much a fact of life as Easter; failure is as much a fact of life as success; disappointment is as much a fact of life as fulfillment. And the church must tell men to take your burden, take your grief and look at it, don't run from it. Say that this is my grief and I must bear it. Look at it hard enough and say 'How can I transform this liability into an asset?'

This is the power that God gives you. He doesn't say that you're going to escape tension; he doesn't say that you're going to escape trials and tribulations. But what religion does say is this: that if you have faith in God, that God has the power to give you a kind of inner equilibrium through your pain. So let not your heart be troubled."