President Obama, giving the eulogy at Congressman John Lewis’s funeral today, said (in part) the following:

[T]his country is a constant work in progress. We were born with instructions: to form a more perfect union. Explicit in those words is the idea that we are imperfect; that what gives each new generation purpose is to take up the unfinished work of the last and carry it further than anyone might have thought possible.

John Lewis — the first of the Freedom Riders, head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, youngest speaker at the March on Washington, leader of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Member of Congress representing the people of this state and this district for 33 years, mentor to young people, including me at the time, until his final day on this Earth — he not only embraced that responsibility, but he made it his life’s work.

John Lewis lived his faith in a public way that challenges each of us who say we are following the same Lord. May the Holy Spirit give us the grace to follow, however imperfectly, in his powerful steps.