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It's Our Time

A brief thought for this weekend where many in the USA and elsewhere are remembering Martin Luther King Jr. Some remember his legacy and seek to build on it, others bewail the lack of prophetic leadership that seeks to bring people together for the sake of justice and peace, in the face of those who chose to peddle fear and foster division. But just today I was reading a passage in Ruth Patterson's book  “Looking Back to Tomorrow” (Veritas 2009) where she quotes from Coretta Scott King’s “My Life with Martin Luther King Jr." (Hodder & Stoughton 1970) and the record there of Martin Luther King's funeral. At the funeral Benjamin E. Mays, President Emeritus of Morehouse College, where King had been a student, said:

“No man is ahead of his time. Every man is within his star, each in his time. Each man must respond to the call of God in his lifetime and not in somebody else's time — Abraham leaving his country in obedience to God's call; Moses leading a rebellious people to the Promised Land; Jesus dying on a cross; Galileo on his knees recanting; Lincoln dying of an assassin's bullet; Woodrow Wilson crusading for a League of Nations; Martin Luther King Jr. dying fighting for justice for garbage collectors — none of these men were ahead of their time. With them the time was always ripe to do what was right and that which needs to be done."
This is our time and what we do with it is down to us... there is no point in awaiting another MLK, or Moses or Mother Teresa - their time is over and done with. This is our time and the time is ripe to do what is right.

Shalom























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