Many times over my years at Allendale, United Methodist leadership and supervisors have urged me to wait, be patient— to stop breaking the rules because “everything will work itself out over time”. Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us that this is a myth. Time is neutral, and calling for patience is a trick of the oppressor. In our individual and collective work for justice, never ever wait to do what is right.

One of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses that the new situation demands and they end up sleeping through a revolution…

We must honestly admit certain things and get rid of certain myths that have constantly been disseminated all over our nation. One is the myth of time. It is the notion that only time can solve the problem of racial injustice…

Time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I’m sorry to say this morning that I’m absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation, the extreme rightists of our nation, the people on the wrong side, have used time much more effectively than the forces of goodwill.

And it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, wait on time.

Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be coworkers with God.

And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must have time and realize that the time is always right to do right.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.