When Bruce Larsen [*] was a small boy, he attended church every Sunday at a big Gothic Presbyterian bastion in Chicago. The preaching was powerful and the music was great. But for him, the most awesome moment in the morning service was the offertory, when twelve solemn, frock-coated ushers marched in lock-step down the main aisle to receive the brass plates for collecting the offering. These men, so serious about their business of serving the Lord in this magnificent house of worship, were the business and professional leaders of Chicago.
One of the twelve ushers was a man named Frank Loesch. He was not a very imposing-looking man, but in Chicago he was a living legend, for he was the man who stood up to Al Capone. In the prohibition years, Capone’s rule was absolute. The local and state police and even the F.B.I. were afraid to oppose him. But singlehandedly, Frank Loesch, as a Christian layman and without government support, organized the Chicago Commission, a group of citizens who were determined to take Mr. Capone to court and put him away. During the months that the Crime Commission met, Frank Loesch’s life was in constant danger. There were threats on the lives of his family and friends. But he never wavered. Ultimately he won the case against Capone and was the instrument for removing this blight from the city of Chicago. Frank Loesch had risked his life to live out his faith.
Each Sunday at this point of the service, Larsen’s father, a Chicago businessman himself, never failed to poke him and silently point to Frank Loesch with pride. Sometimes he’d catch a tear in his father’s eye. For his dad and for all of us this was and is what authentic living is all about.
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*Holwick: In the original illustration I mistakenly put Charles Swindoll here, but on re-reading the story I see that he attributes it to Bruce Larsen.