Week 34—Monday Galatians 5:1, 5-6
Week 34—MONDAY
THE RISING TIDE OF FREEDOM
When India gained her freedom it started a chain reaction—Burma was next, then Ceylon, Indonesia, Indochina, Malaya, Singapore. Then it leaped over to Africa, and when Ghana got her freedom that too started a chain reaction. Thirty-three nations found their freedom in the short space of three years and most of them are in the United Nations determining the destiny of the world—an international miracle.
In the early days in India, I saw a sign on a railway compartment: “For Dheds [outcast] Only.” Now the change: not long ago an outcast has been the Minister for Railways! And said a Brahman colleague, “He is an excellent Minister.” The revolution was bound to come—bound to come in a violent or nonviolent form. Fortunately, in the southern United States it took a nonviolent form, thanks in large measure to Dr. Martin Luther King. I was deeply grateful when he said to me in an interview with him, “I got my first inkling of the possibility of nonviolent non-cooperation from your book on Mahatma Gandhi—an Interpretation. And I determined to apply the method to the doing away with segregation in our land.” Was I grateful, for I had thought that the book had not accomplished much! And here it was helping to accomplish a nonviolent revolution!
The outcasts of Kerala were denied the right of certain roads. Some outcast Christians took a procession on that road. They met a Brahman. He could not go back and there was water on each side of the road. So the only thing he could do was to get out in the water up to his neck while the outcastes had the road! The dispossessed are on the march—the social revolution is on. And it can’t be stopped for it has behind it the ground swell of a world revolution. A black minister put it this way, “The bell is tolling and the tide is rolling in, and you can no more stop it than you can turn back the tides of Hampton Roads with your two hands.” And no right thinking person wants to stop it. For all of us are bound in everyone’s bondage; we are free only in everyone’s freedom.
O Lord Christ, we thank you that as the Son of Man you are behind the rise of outcast people. Your Spirit is stirring our spirits to throw off old bondages and old yokes. We watch with bated breath this rise of those who have been outcasts. May it come out at your feet. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Since I stand with the Son of Man, I will stand with the outcasts in their upward rise.