When Loss Meets Grace

I sang in the junior church choir, I wore a white shirt and black slacks as the official uniform at Unity Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church. If my mother did not secure a ride from a church deacon or member, we rode the Chicago Transit Authority buses to bring us to one of the many houses of worship that served as refuges from Chicago styled racism suffered during the week. 

Standing on the corner of Pulaski and Roosevelt Roads, we endured the four seasons of wind, rain, snow, sleet, and blazing heat to get to church. The buses came every twenty minutes in summer and every hour in the winter, which was always too long. We boarded the green people carrier with soft green seats and open windows as we traveled to Cicero Avenue. My mother had her hands full with her brood of seven children, trying to keep us together while other people boarded the bus, which had wall-to-wall people.

The driver yelled out “Cicero, Cicero Avenue”. Mama got up first and we followed her lead to get off the bus. At the Cicero Avenue stop, all the black people got off the bus because we knew the unwritten rules of the western suburb famous for gangsters and racism.  Al Capone moved his mob operation to Cicero to escape the clutches of the Chicago Police Department. He ran Cicero politics for years. Cicero was known for outright racism. In 1951, a black family who tried to integrate Cicero was met by four thousand whites who made it clear Cicero would never allow black people to live there.[1]  Every black child was told to never find ourselves on the west side of Cicero Avenue if we wanted to stay alive. The racial change from black to white passengers were evident after black people exited the bus.  Cicero had made up its mind about black people as the threat that had to be protected against by any means necessary, even violence.  

Grace is amazing when we take our failed dreams and by faith hand them over to the Master despite the potential losses to occur.  

Psychologists Daniel Kahnenman and the late Amos Tversky found in a groundbreaking study that human beings focus on potential loss rather than any potential gain. They noted we fight like the dickens to prevent any loss of status, privilege, or place from potential challenges or challengers.[2] Potential losses to established groups in a neighborhood are seen as an enemy, threat or competitor for resources such as jobs.  African Americans felt the brunt of the threats from redlining to white flight. 

It is human to protect ourselves against any potential loss. That is why we buy insurance for our houses, cars, and businesses. Yet these efforts really do not protect entirely, but replaces some of the losses that we will never come back.

In Luke 1,Pastor Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were doing the ordinary stuff of life with as much holiness, duty, and prayer as they could. They were clear in their sacred identities. Their work and life was congruent (upright in the sight of God, observed the Lord’s commandments, and regulations blamelessly). Yet they were not protected from loss. 

Zechariah and Elizabeth tried for many years to have a child. They were not asking for a small tribe or complete baseball team, just one child. I wondered what year they gave up trying to have a kid on their own. What is it at 25 or 45? Luke spoke plainly, letting us know they had three strikes against them (no children, Elizabeth’s barrenness, and their old age). Yet more importantly, they felt like failures. They spent their entire living years pleasing God and God will not bless them with their dream.

We are no different from Zechariah and Elizabeth. We want to believe that God blesses those who keep their noses clean, read their bibles, pray constantly, and try hard to do God’s will. God is after something more than making our dreams come true, he wants to create space for the surprise of His undeserved grace. Grace cannot be earned or demanded, it comes as a complete surprise we never expected. Grace is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.[3] Grace is the whisper of love in your ear that is unbelievably good. Grace pierces your heart to break open more capacity for faith, hope, and love. Grace is amazing when we take our failed dreams and by faith hand them over to the Master despite the potential losses to occur.  

Photo provided by the author of his mother's choir.