As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression.
In both instances, there is a twilight
when everything remains seemingly unchanged.
And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware
of change in the air – however slight –
lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
~William O. Douglas in a 1976 letter to Young Lawyers of the Washington State Bar Association

Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood.

We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

This is the way God’s universe is made;
this is the way it is structured.

John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms:
“No man is an island entire of itself.
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
And he goes on toward the end to say,
“Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind;
therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.”

We must see this, believe this, and live by it…
~Martin Luther King Jr. from a sermon in A Knock At Midnight

Do you know why this world is as bad as it is?
It is because people think only about their own business,
and won’t trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed,
nor bring the wrong-doers to light.
My doctrine is this,
that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop,
and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.
~Anna Sewell from Black Beauty

Dr. King’s words and wisdom still inform us of our shortcomings.

We flounder in brokenness
despite our shared global neighborhood,
despite an inescapable mutuality and commitment to brotherhood.

We still stand apart from one another;
even as the bell tolls, we suffer divisiveness
from a lack of humility, grace and love.

Perhaps today, for a day, for a week, for a year,
we can unite in our shared tears:
shed for continued strife and disagreement,
shed for injustice that results in senseless killings,
shed for our inability to hold up one another
as brothers and sisters holy in God’s eyes.

We weep together as the light dawns on this day,
knowing as Dr. King knew:
a new day will come when the Lord God wipes tears away
from all faces and all colors —
a brotherhood created exactly as He intends.