My Time, God's Time - Civil Rights

I have a story of three people.  Two you have heard of, and one you have most likely not.  Please look at these pictures (which are from the website The Smoking Gun):

Please look closely at the man in to the left in the top right picture wearing the 7089.  If you are unaware this is Martin Luther King Jr.  He was arrested with a host of people in a 1958 rally in Alabama.  Someone made a note on the picture noted when he died, 4-4-68.  Martin Luther King Jr. was the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent revolution against the tyranny of segregation.  MLK is known for his speech "I Have A Dream" in which he orated his vision for a unified America.  He never had the opportunity to see his vision become a reality.

In this picture we are focusing on the lady wearing number 7053 at the end of the second row.  The is Ms. Rosa Parks.  She did far more than refuse to move on a bus.  She helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott which led to the integration of the city's public transit.  She joined with the civil rights movement in 1944 with the NAACP, and was later awarded the Spingarn Medal, the group's highest honor.  I could go on and on.  I could talk about her work in the background with the NAACP or with Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).  We could discuss her Presidential Medal of Freedom, or the fact the when she passed away in 2005 she was given the honor of lying in state in the capital rotunda.  She saw many great advances in the way people of color are treated in America, but she never saw the greatest measure of equality.

This is George Bundy Smith.  You don't know him most likely.  He was arrested in 1961 in Montgomery, Alabama as a Freedom Rider.  He served as a judge in New York after he graduated from Yale Law School.  He was appointed to the NY Court of Appeals in 1992 where he served a 14 year term.  He is still alive, but now retired.  He had an opportunity to see a proud day in American history.  He saw President Barack Obama sworn in as the first African-American President of the United States.  I don't care what you believe politically, but when you consider that lynchings were still occurring in the South as early as 45 years ago, we can say that we have made great strides in accepting the differences that our Creator has given us.

What if Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks had given up when their visions were met with adversity?  What if they realized that they would not see all of the changes that they wanted to see so they complained and gave up?  The advancements that we made as a society would not have been realized and we would still be left with the antiquated thought that Blacks and Women are less important than Whites and Men.

Why do we treat the vision that the Lord has given us with less respect than the one MLK spoke about?  The Lord has given us a vision not to sit on it and wait to see what happens, but rather to use it a the goal to aim at so we can accomplish His will in the earth.  If I never see my community become all the things God has shown me that will be fine as long as my work can be a part of the foundation that will make His vision come to completion.