Danielle Mobley made one of the smarter spur-of-the-moment decisions of her life a few weeks ago. She took her little girl, Journee, with her to the grocery.
Journee is nine years old and likes shopping at the food store, though she’d rather go to Target. That Tuesday, she and her mom got what they needed during a lunchtime run and headed out to the car, Danielle’s arms full of groceries. Journee walked around to the passenger side.
A tall, thin man came running up behind Danielle as she opened the driver’s door. He slammed the door into her and shoved her to the pavement, grabbing for her purse. She locked onto it with a vice-like grip, and he reach for the gun jammed in his waistband.
“Gonna make me pop you?” he sneered.
That was the last thing he said before a small iron fist slammed into his face.
Little Journee had seen her mother go down. She raced around the back of the car and plowed headlong into the attacker, fists swinging like crazy. The man regained his composure and flung Journee to the ground, seized the purse and sprinted away.
Journee took off right behind him, chasing the man halfway down the street as pedestrians gaped and her mother yelled for her to come back. Journee, who is as respectful as she is protective of her mom, reluctantly returned, leaving the thief to the police. They caught him, two days later.
For her ferocious devotion, Journee was presented by the local constabulary with a medal for valor, a certificate of bravery – and a $100 gift certificate to Target.
Don’t tell the Black Lives Matter crowd, but Journee is thinking about becoming a police officer when she’s old enough. The West Palm Beach Police Department is holding a job for her.
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Trinity Lutheran Church of Houston held funeral services on November 19 for Beatrice Lehman Green, age 108. Members of the congregation thought it was probably the least they could do for the woman they kicked to the curb 82 years ago.
In 1939, 26-year-old Bea, as friends called her, was new to east Texas, where her family attended a Baptist church. Despite her black Southern heritage, Bea didn’t know much about Baptists. But she was thoroughly grounded in her own denomination; 12 of her relatives were Lutheran ministers, she’d graduated from a Lutheran school, and she played organ in her Lutheran church back in Louisiana.
So, on her first Sunday morning in her new Lone Star home, it just seemed natural to look for a pew at the only Lutheran church in Houston. Just as it somehow seemed polite to the pastor of all-white Trinity Lutheran to stick her in a side room, let her listen to the sermon through the door, give her communion, and invite her to go somewhere else the next week.
Bea could take a hint as well as anyone, only there was no other Lutheran church in town. So … she started her own. She recruited a pastor, sang in the choir, taught Bible classes, joined the Women’s Missionary League, and – of course – played the organ. And she graciously helped build a lasting friendship between her own church and the one that turned her away.
Eighty-one years later, Holy Cross Lutheran Church – the first Lutheran church in Texas open to blacks – is still going strong.
Bea met her husband there. She became active in the Civil Rights movement. And she worked as a secretary and nanny for the Baker family, often taking their little boy, James, walking with her to the grocery. She gently shared her faith and her wisdom with him.
James grew up to become U.S. secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, and chief of staff to presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Now 91, he spoke at Bea's memorial service last week.
“She confronted a lot of closed doors,” Baker said. “But each time a door was closed to her, Bea opened a new one that all of us could enter.”
As Bea stepped through that final door a few weeks ago, her great-granddaughter, Kionna, managed to catch her last words: “Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me. Bless His Holy name.”
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Like a lot of people, ‘m thankful for so many things, this Thanksgiving season. For my wonderful wife and loving family, for faithful friends still here and those recently departed, for health that was sometimes dubious these last few months, for enough to eat and a place to sleep and the freedom, still, to worship and live out my faith. ‘m glad for my dog.
But very high on the list, in this age of fury, amid the deepening frustrations of seeing so many craven and captive to their fears and terrors – enslaved by their own guilt and anger and prejudices and paralyzed by the guilt and anger and prejudices of others – very high on my long, long list is gratitude for people of courage. Physical, moral, spiritual.
Those, like Journee and Bea, who don’t have to make a fuss. They just get the job done.
God bless the brave. May their courage be more contagious than our fears.
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