I first heard about a far-off Asian country called Viet Nam when I was a junior in high school. One of my classmates’ dad was there as an American “advisor.” I didn’t know a thing about the country except it was on the other side of the world and I had no clue why we were interested in being there.

By the time I was in college I knew plenty about Viet Nam. My classmates were now dying there. The sixties were heady times for a young person in college trying to make sense of a world so much bigger than I’d known. There were causes to get behind, important battles to be fought. John Kennedy had been assassinated and our country was involved in a bloody war with no end in sight. Here at home there were civil rights still not given to people of color.

There were protest marches, protest songs to sing and ideas so big and so right it was hard to imagine people on the other side of them. In the middle of Viet Nam and Civil Rights was a man willing to put his life on the line for his beliefs. He did it using the strongest tool available—non-violent love. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech is still the most exciting one I’ve ever heard.

Times change. Issues change. Circumstances change. People stop seeing the world in black and white as they grow older. But some things never change. The power of love in a righteous pursuit is still worth honoring.