My wife Stacey was pregnant with our first child and I was preparing to make good on my promise to build an oak storage center for our son's future bedroom.

I cleared the automobiles, bikes and mowers from our garage, moved my tools into place and turned on the radio for entertainment.

The old radio I owned had been fixed on one frequency for years, a Springfield station that specialized in hard and fast rock-n-roll.

These were the songs I had grown up listening to, with lyrics like “You can't help yourself at all/ Livin' On the Edge/ You can't stop yourself from fallin'/ Livin' On the Edge.”

Before I lifted a single piece of wood, I took that old radio in hand and changed the dial to a radio station in Springfield that plays contemporary Christian music.

God (and my wife) had been working on me for months (maybe years) in regard to the music I was listening to in the car and during my free time. So, I thought, "new project, new music" and changed the dial to 88.3 FM.

I don't remember exactly when, but sometime during this woodworking project I actually started to enjoy listening to Christian radio and that is when the miracle began.

While I was putting together this furniture God was refinishing my life.

While I was sanding off rough pieces of wood, God was smoothing the rough spots off my heart.

While I was cutting boards to the proper length God was cutting through my pride and selfish desires.

God was using the music I was listening to as a catalyst to soften my heart and grow me as a Christian father.

I know in my case the truth set to music began to heal my mind and increase my love for Jesus. It led me to read “The Case for Christ” and it moved my wife and I to search out a new Bible-believing church for us to attend.

For several months I worked on that piece of furniture for our child (I'm not as fast as some). I sanded, glued, nailed and screwed pieces together.

I gave the oak two coats of stain and was adding the final layer of lacquer. That is when "it" happened.

"I think it's almost time," said Stacey pushing the door to the garage while holding the stopwatch and her stomach. I raced inside the house to begin packing.

Then, amid my excitement to get to the hospital I remembered the bookcase.

"Not yet, I have one more coat of lacquer before I can call the project done and I'm going to keep my promise," I said to Stacey as I headed to the garage.

I began spraying lacquer and she helped herself into the car.

God had brought me to that moment -- softened my heart and smoothed off the rough edges -- and He was now ready to let my adventure into the world of "fatherhood" begin.

But, unlike that piece of furniture, God is not done with me yet. In fact, I'm reminded of that every time I turn on the radio.

— By David L. Burton, written orginally in 1999.

Aired January 16, 2006 by Chuck Colson

More than forty years ago, on August 28, 1963, a quarter million people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. They marched here for the cause of civil rights. And that day they heard Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, a speech in which he challenged America to fulfill her promise.

"I have a dream," he said, "that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

While we know of the speech, most people are unaware that King also penned one of the most eloquent defenses of the moral law: the law that formed the basis for his speech, for the civil rights movement, and for all of law, for that matter.

In the spring of 1963, King was arrested for leading a series of massive non- violent protests against the segregated lunch counters and discriminatory hiring practices rampant in Birmingham, Alabama. While in jail, King received a letter from eight Alabama ministers. They agreed with his goals, but they thought that he should call off the demonstrations and obey the law.

King explained why he disagreed in his famous LETTER FROM A BIRMINGHAM JAIL. "One may well ask, how can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer "is found in the fact that there are two kinds of laws: just laws ... and unjust laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws," King said, "but conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

How does one determine whether the law is just or unjust? A just law, King wrote, "squares with the moral law of the law of God. An unjust law . . . is out of harmony with the moral law."

Then King quoted Saint Augustine: "An unjust law is no law at all." He quoted Thomas Aquinas: "An unjust law is a human law not rooted in eternal or natural law."

This is the great issue today in the public square: Is the law rooted in truth? Is it transcendent, immutable, and morally binding? Or is it, as liberal interpreters argue, simply whatever courts say it is? Do we discover the law, or do we create it?

Many think of King as a liberal firebrand, waging war on traditional values. Nothing could be further from the truth. King was a great conservative on this central issue, and he stood on the shoulders of Augustine and Aquinas, striving to restore our heritage of justice rooted in the law of God.

Were he alive today, I believe he would be in the vanguard of the pro-life movement and would be supporting Judge Alito. I also believe that he would be horrified at the way in which out-of-control courts have trampled on the moral truths he advocated.

From the time of Emperor Nero, who declared Christianity illegal, to the days of the American slave trade, from the civil rights struggle of the sixties to our current battles against abortion, euthanasia, cloning, and same-sex "marriage," Christians have always maintained exactly what King maintained.

King's dream was to live in harmony with the moral law as God established it. So this Martin Luther King Day, reflect on that dream -- for it is worthy of our aspirations, our hard work, and the same commitment Dr. King showed.

Copyright (c) 2005 Prison Fellowship