Sometimes you have to not just dream about what could be - you

The words of John Lewis — “Sometimes you have to not just dream about what could be — you get out and push and you pull and you preach. And you create a climate and environment to get those in high places, to get men and women of good will in power to act.” — burn with the fire of struggle and hope. They are not idle musings but the distilled wisdom of a man who bled for justice, who knew that freedom is never given, only wrested into being by courage and persistence.

Lewis warns against the softness of empty dreams. To imagine a better world is noble, but to stop at imagining is to abandon it to dust. Dreams must be yoked to action, pressed into reality by hands that push against resistance and voices that preach against silence. In these words, he teaches that justice is not born of passivity, but of relentless motion — pulling the hesitant forward, pushing the indifferent awake.

History itself is a testament to this truth. Consider the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where Lewis himself, leading the faithful, was beaten and broken by clubs and gas. That march was not a dream but a deed, not a whisper but a shout that echoed into the halls of power. It forged the climate for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, proving that when the humble act, the mighty are compelled to move.

The call to preach is not merely for pulpits, but for every place where truth must be spoken. For words have always been the sparks that kindle movements. The prophets of Israel thundered against kings, the abolitionists lifted their cries against slavery, and the voices of the civil rights movement carved rivers of justice through stone. Lewis knew that preaching is more than speaking — it is planting conviction in hearts, stirring them to deeds that alter history.

Let the generations remember: power does not bend willingly. It is swayed when the multitude push together, when the faithful pull one another forward, when voices rise to preach truth until even the deaf must hear. John Lewis’s words are not merely a reflection on the past; they are a mandate for the future. For every age must create its own climate of justice, its own rising tide of courage, until men and women of good will are compelled not only to dream, but to act.