Sentiyangla Lemdor
Dimapur
Martin Luther King Jr. standing in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, proclaimed a vision that echoes Micah 4:1-5. He said.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, the rough places will be made plain,
and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all
flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back with. With this
faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony
of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle
together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free
one day. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
„my country, ‟tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from
every mountainside, let freedom ring.
The prophet Micah was active during a period when the society was plagued by corruption, injustice, and social disorder; it was during this time that he used his voice to speak against all evils in the society through the leading and guidance of the Holy Spirit. In such a time where there was much parity between the rich and the common people, the affluent sector of the society misused their authority and power, justice was distorted, and in such a context it was the vulnerable, the poor, and the marginalized who suffered while those with influence and authority prospered, much like the predicament that our society finds itself in today.
But unlike the many prophetic books that follow a similar pattern of judgment and punishment, the book of Micah takes a different route, it does not end in him pronouncing judgement upon the people. Instead, the book ends with the prophet pointing its readers toward a very different future: he paints a picture of an ecology where the world is now under God’s reign where fear is a thing of the distant past, because peace would and effectively replace all forms of violence, and where every person would sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one would make them afraid (Micah 4:4).
Perhaps that is why Micah continues to speak even today.
When we look around us, we find ourselves asking difficult questions. Why does corruption continue to shape public life? Why do the rich become richer while many struggle simply to be heard? Why do those individuals in authority often determine what is acceptable while voices without influence remain unheard?
Why do communities that speak strongly about values sometimes fail to protect human dignity?
And what of our women?
We live in a society, a community that on the surface level professes to uphold values like peace and justice, if so, why has it become ever so difficult to practice them? Why do many continue to live in fear? In such a case should not cases of violence and abuse be unheard of? Then why is it that stories of violence, exploitation, sexual abuse, insecurity, and oppression continue to shape our everyday life, emerging from every corner like mushrooms thriving? Why do some voices remain loud while others disappear into silence almost instantly? Is it all a facade that we continue to uphold?
These are not merely political questions. They are questions about human dignity, justice, and the kind of society we are becoming.
Too often, we carry the misconception that our faith in God belongs only inside Churches or within private spirituality. We place faith into categories that fit our comfort and assume that belief has little relevance to the realities of the world around us.
But faith was never meant to end with personal comfort.
If our faith does not shape how we respond to suffering, injustice, fear, inequality, and human dignity, if the faith that we profess to embody does not show in the way we live out our everyday lives then we must ask ourselves the crucial question if we truly are able to comprehend what faith means. If we reduce faith to prayer, fasting, reading Scripture, attending Churches, and giving attendance, simple piety and nothing more, and while all of these stand essential, or in all sense crucial yet, we still seem to be missing something integral.
When Jesus walked among people, He stood with the voiceless. He confronted injustice. He actively spoke against oppression factors that exploit one at the expense of the other . He embraced those that were ostracised and included them in their fold, walked with them and befriended them. He was radical in His dealings where He sought to defend dignity, restore the broken, and proclaimed a Kingdom where the last became first and actively preached an idea where greatness is found not in power but in service.
Despite the many opinions that the common masses held of Him, some accepted while others outrightly criticized and rejected Him, Jesus refused to conform and remain silent in the face of suffering. And in the same light, we are also called to become His hands and feet in a world still marked by hatred, injustice, corruption, exploitation, and brokenness.
The hope, the future that Micah is painting, invites us to imagine that life is more than simply striving for ends to meet.
It calls us to be different, to be set apart, to be transformed. But this vision of peace and transformation that Micah is trying to usher in is not merely a future hope, something that we passively wait for, hoping for it to fully establish itself on earth. It is a reality that has already been inaugurated. Though we continue to witness conflict, injustice, fear, violence, and many forms of suffering today, God’s reign has already begun breaking into history.
And how did it begin? It began in and through Jesus Christ.
When Jesus came into the world, He ushered in the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God became a concrete reality and no longer just an abstract idea, it became so through the way Christ conducted Himself and through the way He went about His ministry, in the way He taught, in His dealings with people and everyday life which challenged the status quo if the time, changing the structures of the time, when He effectively healed the sick and restored broken souls, in His forgiveness and acts of reconciliation, and in all that He did, which ultimately culminated in His death and resurrection.
Through this, the envisioned future that God prepared actively took shape and entered the present.
With that being said, with all the foundations laid out, the Kingdom of God is now redefined its now stops being something that we merely anticipate without actually doing anything, hoping something to materialize without even lifting a finger; rather, it becomes something concrete that we are all invited to participate in, which becomes a crucial challenge for us today. It invites us to be present and try to work towards and usher in the envisioned Kingdom.
And having that knowledge, now that we are all aware, that Christ has taken the first step on our behalf and already initiated the work of inaugurating the reign of peace and transformation, the responsibility now rests upon us to be active and start moving towards the goal instead of simply remaining passive observers. We are called to become peacemakers, faith bearers, and advocates for change and justice.
Peace and justice are not optional concerns for Christians because, when they are ignored, the consequences become painfully visible: the strong oppress the weak, those in authority exploit the powerless, fear replaces security, and peace becomes nothing more than an illusion.
This is why we cannot withdraw our faith from the realities of society.
We are called to come together and work toward the values of God’s Kingdom: to protect dignity, to stand with those who are unheard, to resist injustice, and to embody reconciliation.
The Kingdom of God is God’s work, yet He invites us to participate in it.
And every act of mercy, every pursuit of justice, every effort toward peace becomes a witness that His reign is already at work among us.
And this transformation is not simply waiting for a better future somewhere else. It begins here and now. If we hope that one day something good will happen, then we must begin today by living in ways that make that hope visible.
As we walk toward the future we desire, the future we envision, the picture of hope we carry in our minds, let us move toward it by shaping it with our own hands. Because the future we long for already exists as a vision within us, we know what we desire. And now that we know what we desire, let us walk toward it and work toward it instead of expecting someone else to build it for us.
In our deeds, in the way we do things, from the seemingly smallest to the largest, in our acts of justice when we stand for the right cause, when we speak up, in every refusal to conform to and normalize corruption, in our every effort to create peace in places where conflict thrives, and in our acts of compassion and solidarity, all these acts become a living testimony, a witness that we can still opt for another way of life. The way we do things becomes proof that another way of living is possible.
The world does not only need more speeches about hope.
It needs people who live in that hope.
People who make transformation visible.
Perhaps the question is not whether a better future will come.
Perhaps the deeper question is:
What kind of future are we helping to build today?
