Inseparable

“And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’” (from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech)

Did you hear the echo of Galatians 3:28?  “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

King built on this theme of unity and inseparability in a letter he wrote from a Birmingham jail: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

This idea, that no man is free while his neighbor is a slave, has widespread application. Do we not suffer homelessness together? Can we really live in comfort if our neighbors have no food, no shelter, no rest?  Is it not our responsibility to provide practical, loving help to our brother or sister in need?

~James Bishop, digital media specialist