By Terry Allen
Lucille “Big Mama” Allen’s playbook should be part of the White House’s domestic policy. Her wisdom would be the game changer necessary to arrest the development of what some consider an ill turn in our communities and cities.
Big Mama was an influencer. Today, her ways and means would be the perfect template for domestic policy. Let me start with Big Mama’s origin first.
Whenever she said, “Take up the cross,” it was always delivered as a call to action and a charge against something unkind and inhumane.
I heard her shout that three times for the murder of three “M” men – Martin, Malcolm and Medgar.
Her biblical reference was: Matthew 16:24-26 24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
Big Mama wanted us to know although we do good and great things in the world with the strengths that we have worked at while we actively avoid our weaknesses that we have self-assessed as not good for us.
To “take up our cross,” however, means to lay our fears and E.G.O (Easing God Out) aside. It means to lay our “ego strength” aside.
Taking up our cross means, instead, picking up those weaknesses that we so often try to run away from in life.
Her playbook recipe, “just stand and take up the cross and we all will be redeemed!” was saying we must exercise the power to take up a defense and dismantle the devil’s handiwork now! Today not tomorrow.
Why do we need to take up the cross? Well, Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man who was unarmed at the time he was killed by police in Akron, Ohio, last week, was shot at least 60 times after 90 shots were dispersed at this Uber Eats driver.
Per an NPR report, while the investigation into the shooting is still ongoing, it was said officers independently related that they did perceive that Walker was a threat. Alert : He is running away from them with a COVID-19 face mask and that sparked Akron, Ohio officers to shoot 90 times, hitting him 60 times and then handcuffing him after he had been shot 60 times.
OK! So now the same questions arise, the same protests are in play and the same excuses are being used as a rationale. So now do you understand why Big Mama would stand and shout to the top of her voice, “ Stand and take up the cross?”
Big Mama would be here now taking up the cross, instead. She would be picking up those weaknesses that we so often try to run away from in life and making them spiritual roses.
Email me if you TAKE UP THE CROSS and make an impact at TerryAllenPr@gmail.com.
Terry Allen is an award-winning media professional, journalist, and entrepreneur. He is also the founder of City Men Cook and 1016 Media. Reach him at terryallenpr@gmail.com
