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Good morning

On the 4th April 1968, Martin Luther King was standing on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was due to lead a march of sanitation workers against low wages and poor working conditions.

A single shot was heard, and the great civil rights activist, whose ‘I have a dream’ speech still reaches people’s hearts today, was assassinated. He was only 39.

During those 39 years, he had changed a nation, and inspired the world. It was no longer possible to ignore the desperate inequalities between black and white Americans, and the life opportunities available to them.

And many wider debates, such as apartheid in South Africa, and equality for women, were shaped by the civil rights movement in America. Martin Luther King championed non-violent protest. His aim was not vengeance upon, or destruction of the oppressor, but the end of oppression, and a world in which all might flourish.

As in the case of many people who die young, I wonder what his maturer years might have been like. He would have been in his eighties now, with a lifetime in which to develop his philosophy. What if, like Nelson Mandela, he had lived through and beyond his dream, and seen both its fulfilment and its failures?

Would the path to equality have been smoother, less violent? Would there have been riots in Detroit, or Brixton. Would America have a different voice in our own times? How would he have participated in debates about gay rights, or responded to today’s acts of violence and terror?

God of vision, we thank you for those who shape the thinking of an age, and turn their thinking into action. Help us to build on the vision of a world of justice, and of peace.

Amen