When good people...

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day. Marked locally by a big budget event -- an annual tribute downtown. Further north there was a wreath laid at the memorial to Dr. King. We closed schools. We closed businesses. The banks were open. You could shop at most stores. But did we really honor him? What would he say if he was here today to witness the day that is set aside to honor him?

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. “ - Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have to believe that with all the evil out there, all the otherwise good people who do nothing to stand against it, all the outrage we've surpressed for whatever lie we tell ourselves, that if he were here today to speak, he'd feel dishonored. He wouldn't want the schools closed, the businesses with shut doors, the wreaths and memorials. He'd want action. He'd want words that weren't empty. He'd want us to make a difference today.

Forty five years later, are we any closer than we were then?

And when this happens, when we allow freedom 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!