The beauty of days in which we recognize icon’s like Martin Luther King, Jr. and the movement he represents is that it offers us the perspective of just how far we’ve come, and it is a solemn reminder of where we once were.
I have recently observed a number of scenarios that have caused me to question what Christian equality truly looks like and what our collective next step must be. What better setting to offer these reflections than the holiday dedicated to a man who championed the “content of character” as a person’s value rather than the color of their skin. This was truly a man who envisioned a community in which “all flesh” see things together. I thank God that I have grown up in a world that stepped beyond the tragedies of segregation and mass, racial injustice. My lifetime has not known appearance as a perquisite. My classrooms, locker rooms, universities, teams, and social settings have always been painted with a beautiful spectrum of diversity, worlds apart from where America could be found on the eve of King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech.
A host of courageous leaders pioneered a movement for equality in that decade. But that was the need for that decade. That was the necessary step toward true equality in that day. I look around and ask, What must be ours?
