The View from the Road

The longer I am here, the more my thoughts drift to Martin Luther King, Jr. and his role in encouraging non-violent protest throughout the Civil Rights Movement.  His inspiration for that method of appeal came largely from Ghandi and the country where I live now- the country that is home to more than half the world's slaves.

On the evening of April 3, 1968, roughly 3,000 citizens gathered in a Memphis lodge to hear Dr. King speak on the plight of sanitation workers.  He was ill in a hotel room and did not plan to attend.  But when the backup speaker called Dr. King's room to relay the size and fervency of the crowd, he changed his mind and was driven to the rally through appropriately tempestuous weather.

It's a miracle that he got out of bed.  Dr. King delivered this address less than 24 hours before his assassination.

In the last words he would ever utter before news cameras, Dr. King addressed growing criticism of his non-violent methods.  Others were displeased with what they perceived to be a lacking speed of progress.  They wanted to test more forceful measures.  Dr. King stood his ground.  Here is the final leg of the speech.

Those words are just as true today as they were 42 years ago.

Today I was fixing a cup of tea in the office kitchen when another intern asked to show me something.  She reminded me about a girl in one of the local aftercare homes we've visited; one to whom we've both taken a liking.  This girl is rail-thin, silent, and seemingly shell-shocked though she has been in the home's care for more than a month.  She was rescued from slavery in a labor camp.  The intern took me to a computer and pulled up a file that stored pictures of the former slave taken just after she was freed.  Her back and appendages were covered with scars and still-healing lacerations.  Her head bore a gash seeping blood that had not yet dried.  Her wounds were fresh.

This was no detached textbook study.  I know this girl.  I've brushed her hair.  I've given her a song and dance in pursuit of a smile.  These pictures clarified the reality of her existence before rescue: a gruesome violence and denial of self-determination.  But by God's grace that horrific place is not the end of her story.  As I type these words she is being restored.  She is being transformed and redeemed by the power of God moving through his servants.


Some people hear of human rights atrocities, or observe them briefly or from a distance, and proclaim that a loving and all-powerful God simply cannot exist.  I would humbly submit that their conclusion is flawed on the grounds of a false premise.  Their fallacy?  That a loving and all-powerful God would without exception swoop down and rescue every disenfranchised human from immediate pain.  That is not his nature for this chapter of history.  We believe in full faith that a day will come when all who receive the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ will leave this earth and worship him in Glory; free from all pain, and free from all fear.  An ultimate rescue will undoubtedly come- and when it does, the pains of this world will pass away beyond our remembrance.

In the meantime, his plan is different.  His plan is us.  We are his instruments for rescue.  Earthly rescue comes as the earthly people of God respond to his desire to move through them.  When girls like the one I know live for years in slavery, it is because their brothers and sisters failed to act effectively against that slavery.  Not because their God forsook them.  And when girls like the one I know are freed, it is because their brothers and sisters took up their crosses as the hands and feet of the God of rescue.

Free will is the beauty not only of our salvation, but of our sanctification; sanctification molding us in the likeness of the God of justice, compassion, moral clarity and rescue.

I believe that Dr. King had, indeed, seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.  He had seen the Lord's people rising up for their fellow man.

The road to freedom is long.  But our Lord knows about long roads, and he reigns over them.  I'm honored to peek down a road trod by Christians who have taken the light of Christ into the darkest corners of humanity.  The view from the road: he is here.

Our Lord is here.