Pray With Your Feet

Posted January 13, 2014

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. day will be upon us soon. In that context, I would like to share with you a story.

During the height of the Civil Rights era, Dr. Martin Luther King led a march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama. One of the people who participated in that march was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. When Rabbi Heschel returned from Selma, he was asked by someone, ‘Did you find much time to pray, when you were in Selma?’ Rabbi Heschel responded, ‘I prayed with my feet.’ What was his point? That his marching, his protesting, his speaking out for Civil Rights was his greatest prayer of all.

Of course, traditional prayer is important. However, it is also important to see that when we do something to make the world a better place, when we use our feet to pray, and that is real powerful prayer. Therefore, I just want to bless you all that we should pray with our feet, with our legs, with our hands, and with our arms. But not just with those parts of our body – with every part of our body and with everything we have, with our computers, with our pens, with our wallets, with our bank accounts. Whatever we have in our life, we should pray with. In other words, whatever we have in our life, we should use to make this world a better world.