Missing Your Opportunity

In today’s Statesman Rev. Dr. Lee Hicks has a thoughtful piece in on his regrets for not doing something at a key turning point in the Civil Rights battle:

Saturday night, April 15, trying to get in the mood for Easter (the next day), I came across the History Channel, and its special, “10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America.” For an hour I watched “The Summer of 1964” — the story of the deaths of the three civil- rights workers. These were male college students, volunteering in voter-registration drives in Mississippi. They and others were so successful that the Klan rose up, led by a minister, and ambushed and killed them. Six weeks later their bodies were found in a quarry. Rather than being intimidated, the movement spread and ultimately resulted in the 1965 Voting Rights Act by President Johnson.

As I watched this drama unfold, it brought back guilty memories. I had graduated from college and seminary in California and went to Nebraska to serve my first parish in 1962. Back then, there were few African-Americans in Nebraska, and they were mostly in North Omaha. And so as the civil- rights movement was shown on our TVs, we didn’t pay much attention, for it didn’t involve our daily lives.

He spends the rest of the reader’s view wondering what he should have done. The key message of the piece that sticks out to me is not to miss your moment to do something. As Jacob Marley said, “…no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused!” We must all pray that we do not miss our moment, that chance when we can make a difference. If we do, its something that will haunt us for the rest of our lives.

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