The Smallest Feet Led the Way

On May 2, 1963, the doors of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama swung open, and a stream of children poured into the streets. They were six, ten, fourteen years old. For weeks, SCLC strategist James Bevel had been recruiting students from Birmingham's schools, training them in nonviolence, preparing them for what the adults had grown too cautious to attempt. The movement in Birmingham had stalled. Seasoned marchers feared losing jobs and homes. But the children had no mortgages to protect, no employers to appease. They had only conviction.

That first day, over six hundred young people were arrested. They sang freedom songs in the backs of paddy wagons and inside the cells of the Jefferson County jail. When Bull Connor turned fire hoses and police dogs on them the following day, the images broadcast worldwide became the conscience-shattering turning point of the Civil Rights Movement.

Jesus told His disciples, "Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Those Birmingham children embodied something the adults had calculated away: an uncomplicated willingness to step through the door. They did not weigh the cost the way seasoned activists did. They simply believed the cause was right and walked forward.

The kingdom of God has always advanced this way. Not through the cautious, but through those with faith uncluttered enough to move when the Spirit says go.