The Mantle on the Riverbank

In 1968, thirty-nine-year-old Ralph Abernathy stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, cradling Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as his mentor lay dying. Within hours, Abernathy faced a question no one could answer for him: Would he pick up what had fallen?

He did. Abernathy led the Poor People's Campaign to Washington that summer, sleeping in the mud of Resurrection City, carrying forward a vision that was never meant to die with one man. He never claimed to be King. He simply refused to let the work fall to the ground.

Elisha watched his master Elijah ascend in a chariot of fire, and in that searing moment of loss, something fell from the sky — a rough prophet's cloak landing in the dust. Elisha could have wept over it as a relic. Instead, he picked it up, walked to the Jordan, and struck the water. "Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?" he cried. The river split open, and the answer was clear: right here, still moving, still powerful.

God's work is never buried with God's servants. The mantle always falls. The only question is whether someone will have the courage to pick it up, walk to their own Jordan, and trust that the same God who parted the waters before will part them again.