Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is on Monday, but today is his birthday.

I think too many people forget that his driving purpose was for more than just equal rights, it was for people to know and share in the love of his Savior.

If you don’t read anything else today, please read this. I copied it from Promises to Keep: Daily Devotions for Men of Integrity

A middle-aged black man on skid row in Los Angeles recently paraded down the street with a sign that read, “I NEED ‘BREAD’ TO GET ME TO THE MILLION MAN MARCH IN D.C.” He held out a hat for donations to finance his trip the 1995 event. Drugs and alcohol had failed, maybe he could fill the void in his heart by going to the march. He, like thousands of others, felt empty but didn’t realize that you cannot find meaning in an ocean of lost souls.

This man’s father had been in Washington in 1963, gathered with whites and blacks at the Lincoln Memorial with demands to pass civil rights legislation. And those demands were met. But what effect did this victory have for him? His only son was steeped in hate and was imprisoned for “wasting” a rival gang member. Three generations in search of imperishable food and all remaining empty. His father may have been searching for the right things but did he go to the right place to find it?

Few will forget the surge of the crowd when Martin Luther King Jr., made his “I have a dream” speech, accompanied by while folk singers such as Joan Beaz and Bob Dylan. One writer described the event as “in keeping with King’s color-blind vision of the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners sitting together at the table of brotherhood.” Even today I know few people who can’t sit through a recording of that same speech without being captured by the beauty of the vision of a unified country. King’s legacy will remain with us, but how many neighborhoods have become brotherhoods? Is this nation closer to judging people by the content of their character? The work has been done in the House of Representatives and the Senate of this great nation, but we have forgotten the greater work that must be done at the altar of repentance. Even with legislative victories, the insatiable hunger for meaning persists.

Rhetoric does not satisfy the soul. New laws will not feed people who are starving for purpose. Only Jesus does. Two thousand years ago He proclaimed that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Matt: 4:4).

Are you hungry? broken? dispossed? searching for meaning? purpose? … Do you thirst for truth? God wants to speak to you straight from His heart. After hope and reason have failed, faith conquers.

Wellington Boone, from his book Breaking Through: Taking the Kingdom into the Culture by Out-Serving Others

Paladin is an Internet-veteran turned tech-savvy Realtor. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter.