The Next Right Thing

In her book, The Next Right Thing, Emily Freeman says Jesus often instructs people in Scripture by showing them a small next step. For instance, when Jesus performs a miracle, she says he often gives people a simple next step. He tells the leper to tell no one about what has happened, but to go and show himself to the priest (Matthew 8:4). To the person with paralysis, he says to get up, take his bed, and go home (Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26; John 8:5-9). After raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead, he instructs Jairus and his wife to give her something to eat (Mark 5:21-43).

“At first glance, that seems like a waste of a captive audience,” Freeman says. “Rather than a life plan, a clear vision, or a five-year list of goals, the leper, the paralytic, and Jairus and his wife were given clear instructions by Jesus about what to do next--and only next.” (Emily Freeman, The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions (Revell, 2019), 15.)

It’s important for us to note that, more often than not, the next right thing is not monumental or extraordinary.

It is not “ending systemic racism” or “bringing down the patriarchy” or “solving generational poverty.” Those lofty and laudable goals are too big and complex for a single step. The next right thing is manageable and within reach. The next right thing invites us to take a realistic step and to trust God will lead us as we take the next one and the one after that.

For some of us, this next step may feel huge, and for others, it may feel like it’s not enough. Perhaps the “next right thing” is the “daily bread” or the water in the wilderness we ask God to provide - not bread for a week or a month or a lifetime, but for “this day.”

Friends who are part of the recovery community have shared how this concept is common within the language of addiction recovery as well. Recovery focuses not on tomorrow’s sobriety but on today’s. The idea actually originated with psychiatrist Carl Jung, who advised a patient that even though she did not know the future, she did know the “next and most necessary thing” to do. Sometimes, when we focus on the end goal, it feels overwhelming and completely out of reach, so we do not even bother to take the first step. The challenge immobilizes us. But, when we shift our focus and attention to the present moment, to the next and most necessary thing, we are equipped to keep moving forward toward our end goal.

God showed the people the next right thing to do to live another day in the wilderness. God met their immediate need of water; God did not immediately rescue them from the wilderness.

We often look to Martin Luther King, Jr. for the many ways he helped to bring lasting, systemic change during the Civil Rights Movement. However, we rarely see the smaller, day-to-day actions and decisions he made that contributed to his transformative work.

One of the biggest turning points in King’s journey happened at his own kitchen table one late Friday night, January 27, 1956. He and his family moved to Montgomery in 1954 so he could become pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. He actually had no intention of becoming involved in the civil rights protests until the Montgomery bus boycott, which began with Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her seat to a white man. King was asked to become president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the pastors’ group leading the boycott –when he accepted, he thought surely they could get this issue resolved fairly quickly. However, two years later, and with the boycotts ended, tensions were still escalating, and it felt as if they were getting nowhere. He had already been in jail once (for going 30 MPH in a 25 MPH zone). He had actually submitted his resignation letter to the association, but none of them would accept it.

King came home late one night after another strategy meeting, only to answer yet another horrific phone call from an unknown caller using vulgar words against him and threatening to kill his family. At first, King had tried to brush off these calls, but now he was getting 30 to 40 a day, and they were only getting worse. King hung up the phone, walked to the kitchen, put on a pot of coffee with trembling hands, and sank into a chair at his kitchen table. Writing of this experience, he said:

I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me, I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. "I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone.”

At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced [God] before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: "Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever." Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything." (Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (Harper & Row, 1958), 134-135.

That experience at the kitchen table gave King the courage to keep doing what felt like the next right thing. He continued pastoring and investing himself in the Montgomery Improvement Association. Three days later, King’s house was bombed while his family was inside, and they barely escaped. He said his kitchen-table epiphany sustained and carried him through. He would go on to lead the Civil Rights Movement until his death in 1968, 12 years later. To this day, people tour the Kings’ parsonage in Montgomery, Alabama, often asking if they can sit at the kitchen table where King had his epiphany. Even the original coffee cups the family used are still in place.

We know the rest of King’s story. His actions, the next right things for him, led to the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, the March on Washington in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the marches in Selma and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We also know that doing the next right thing ultimately led to King’s death in 1968 when he was assassinated while he was standing on the second-floor balcony outside his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee. He was in Memphis to help lead a protest on behalf of the striking Memphis sanitation workers, the next right thing for him.

King’s life reminds us that doing the next right thing is never small, insignificant, or inconsequential. It is as revolutionary as it is risky.   

**This essay is a revised version of pages 91-94 in Hard and Holy Work: A Lenten Journey through the Book of Exodus, which I co-wrote with Mary Alice Birdwhistell.

A Benediction (Or Miscellaneous Thoughts)

Uncle Ishmael will be exploring the biblical book of Exodus in alignment with the Revised Common Lectionary. The lectionary begins on August 23 with Exodus 1 and concludes its journey through the book on October 11 with Exodus 32.

Here's a list of the Sundays and the Exodus scripture lesson:
October 4 2026 Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
October 11 2026 Exodus 32:1-14