“Grant Us Visions That Shall Lift Us”

O God our eternal Father, we praise thee for gifts of mind with which thou hast endowed us. We are able to rise out of the half-realities of the sense world to a world of ideal beauty and eternal truth. Teach us, we pray Thee, how to use this great gift of reason and imagination so that it shall not be a curse but a blessing. Grant us visions that shall lift us from worldliness and sin into the light of thine own holy presence. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

This is a prayer Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave as part of his radio broadcast from Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, July 5 – September 6, 1953.

Thou, Dear God: Prayers that Open Hearts and Spirits, The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., edited and introduced by Lewis V. Baldwin, Beacon Press, 2012.