I’ve always been inspired by Robert F. Kennedy.
Recently my friend Claire pointed me to RFK’s 1966 Ripples Of Hope Address delivered at Capetown University, South Africa. Like President Kennedy, he sought to inspire us to reach beyond easy and immediate to follow big dreams and strive for something beyond ourselves.
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Kennedy acknowledged the difficulty of stepping up and accepting the responsibility to lead. He listed four dangers.
“First, is the danger of futility: the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills — against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man.
“‘Give me a place to stand,’ said Archimedes, ‘and I will move the world.’ … Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and then the total — all of these acts — will be written in the history of this generation.
“The second danger is that of expediency: of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. …If there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people around the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs — that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems.
“And a third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. … I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.
“For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger, my friends, is comfort, the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us.”
These words reminded me of my conviction that RFK’s assassination, more than even President Kennedy’s, was a pivot point in U. S. history. As I read I remembered a time when we believed we could go to the moon, establish civil rights for all, and work together toward what RFK called “the kind of world we would all want to build.”
I believe that’s the sort of time Jesus came to establish, one in which we work together to build His kingdom both now and forever. It’s a big, bold, impractical notion.
We want to make a few ripples of hope. Will you join us?
Do you find yourself occasionally slowed by one of Kennedy’s “four dangers”? Which one(s)? How do you get past the obstacle?