Changing lives

The man wore prison blue, coat and pants, and a bald head though he was but 23 years of age. He also wore the truth, something these men had fought for and against all these years.

Corey admitted he was having a difficult time with Christ. "I'm fighting a tug of war inside me," he said.

I offered to hear him out, to find out out about this tug of war, but he declined, staring at the floor and rubbing his gleaming head with his hand.

Three hours later, he called me to the side of the old gym at the correctional center. "Can we talk?" I assured him I was willing and mostly able.

"It's just so tough," he said. "I have nothing when I get out of here. My parents have nothing, I have nothing and I have no way of getting anything. I won't have any money. I won't be able to get a job. I'll have to go back to selling drugs just to get enough money to eat on. That's why I won't say much about Jesus here like some of these guys. I don't want to say anything all the while knowing I'm going to be doing something when I get out of here. I won't be that say."

I looked at his clear brown eyes. He was waiting for some glimmering wisdom. Clearly he didn't know me.

Finally I said this, and I pray it was near the right thing. I told him, "Corey, I believe God loves you more than the action you might have to take. I believe if you have absolutely no other way of getting money to make some sort of living, God understands that too. We're not here to judge you. That's all between God and you. I just know that if you want to tell someone you love Jesus, no one is going to hold that against you in the future."

He tentatively smiled, looked up at me with glistening eyes that were filling and then he did the most amazing thing. He hugged me.

We spent a weekend in prison this past Thursday through Sunday. It was no amazing personal journey. It was a journey of 30 residents and 22 or so visitors together, hoping that Christ would be checked in at the door as well.

I can only speak for myself that I knew not what I was doing, but I prayed long and I prayed hard that hearts would be touched, and God did the touching. I saw men crying who simply weren't men who cried. I saw lives changed of men who simply wanted to get a better brand of food fed to them.

In the end, as we hugged and said our goodbyes, the truth was the visitors went back to their homes and the inmates went back to their bunks and to the endless days that lie ahead in their incarceration.

We can only hope that the lives that were changed were for more than a weekend. Oh, we can also hope that those in prison were changed, too.