The only moments in our lives that count
for anything are those when we do the right thing, when we don’t have to look
down at the table but can raise our heads and look each other in the eye.
Nothing else matters. Alexei Navalny, PATRIOT . 239 .
“It’s not always easy to do what’s right.”
Well, that’s true. Doing the next right thing has consequences just as doing
the next wrong thing. However, doing the next right thing leaves one with a
feeling of satisfaction of doing what is right regardless of the
consequences.
In a sea of corruption, Alexei Navalny became a leader among millions of
Russians who want a democracy and do away with corruption. For his work,
Navalny was poisoned, imprisoned under false pretences, and finally murdered in
prison. Murdered for doing the next right
thing.
This happens on a daily basis in terms of character assassination around the
“water cooler” in offices; it happens daily, nowadays, in various media where
the name of good people is
destroyed.
“The only moments in our lives that count for anything are those when we do the
right thing…” there is a tremendous satisfaction in a healthy sense when we do
something we know to be right, to take a stand against those whose words
and behavior is bent on destruction. It was said of Jesus “It is better that
one man die for the country.” It was thought that if Mahatma Gandhi, Dag
Hammarskjold or Martin Luther King, were out of the way then things could “get
back to normal. These men lived doing ‘the next right thing” and for doing so
they paid the
price.
In school yards. Offices, in the work place, students, men and women are
shunned, silenced, abandoned, sneered at, for daring to do the next right thing
and, despite all the jeering, they0 stand their ground because they know that
what they are doing is
Right.
Across the world today in church and in society, locally, nationally,
internationally, there are those who stand for equality, respect, democracy,
justice, and they will pay the price of following their conscience, following
Jesus, living the Beatitudes, their
scripture.
Creator God, Great Spirit, I give
thanks for those men and women who shine a light in the darkness to offer us
hope for a better future. May the Holy Spirit guide us
in these dark days to do the Right thing regardless of the price to be paid so
that future generations will live in peace and freedom with respect and justice
for all. Amen
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