“Hauntings of the Past”

As I drove through my home town this past week I passed several times through a part of town that I rarely entered growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s. Plano was much smaller back then with a population of under 5000. The Central Expressway was just reaching that far north and the trip to Richardson to the south rambled a two lane highway going through a five mile stretch of countryside, while the same highway made its way northward to McKinney, another 15-20 minute sightseeing journey. The streets that I drove over this past week were lined with homes built and fixed up by Habitat for Humanity and other groups in Plano. The roads in this area in the 50’s and 60’s were dusty dirt roads, unless it rained of course, then they were muddy rut infested travel paths. The area was and is still known as the Douglass Community. Growing up we called it “Colored Town”.

When I think back of this era in my life I can still see the pictures in my mind of a life of segregation. I worked at A&P and often during my break would go to the coffee and donut shop across the street. I can still see the sign in the window on my right as I passed through the door, “No Coloreds Allowed”. It was part of life and I paid little attention to it. In the back of the department store downtown there were three doors labeled, “Men”, “Women” and “Colored”. On the wall was a chilled water fountain with the sign, “Whites Only” posted above it and off to the side a dirty white ceramic fountain labeled, “Colored”.

Open the newspaper to look for a house and you’d see “Houses for Rent”, “Houses for Sale” and “Houses Colored”. At the theater the “colored kids” sat in the balcony and entered and exited through the side door. There were schools for the “White” kids and schools for the “Colored” kids. As I can recall, I was only in their school once when our Advanced Science Class was asked to judge their science projects. We were amazed at how good the projects were done. Did we expect something different because they were different?

There were no riots, no major issues that I can remember. That’s the way it was in this small Texas town. We thought little of it and accepted all this as just a way of life.

As I look back it’s sad to know that life was like this for so many because of skin color. These pictures of the past are haunting reminders of the injustices and mistakes of days gone by. Sometimes you’d like to go back and just make a difference, change things and correct the wrongs that were done. Unfortunately, we cannot travel back in time. The past is past and cannot be changed or altered.

It’s like that in the church. As leaders there are times that we wish we could go back and maybe do things a little different, rethink a decision or handle a situation better. Leaders are not perfect, we make mistakes and as hard as it is we often have to “bite the bullet” and move on, living with a past failure here and there. The point is that we can’t change the past.

We can, however, change today and the future. We cannot live and serve the Lord in a world of regrets and feeling down about what has been done wrong yesterday. True leadership takes their failings, their faults, their past errors and learns from them, but they use this knowledge to do better today and even better tomorrow.

The Apostles failed several times in their following of Jesus, but you never read of Jesus reminding them of their faults and failures over and over. Their lack of faith, their lack of understanding and their quarreling were forgotten soon after it happened and Jesus went on to talk about the future with them. He wanted to make them better.

In the 1990’s the City of Plano spent more than 2 million dollars revitalizing the Douglass Community. They could not go back and change the past as painful as it may have been, but they could change today and the days that followed. Many people who lived in the community in the 50’s and 60’s still live there today. It’s their home, only now the homes are painted and the roads are paved.

Leaders need to think forward not backwards. We need to see what can be done, what works can be accomplished and what great services we can do for the Lord today. Leaders make mistakes and will make more mistakes, but the church lives by what we do today, this very moment, not by what has passed. As the Psalmist wrote, “This is the day which the LORD has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

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Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:12-14