Beginning again

“...the second step to holy obedience is this: Begin where you are. Obey now. Use what little obedience you are capable of, even if it be like a grain of mustard seed. Begin where you are. Live this present moment, this present hour as you now sit in your seats, in utter, utter submission and openness toward Him. Listen outwardly to these words, but within, behind the scenes, in the deeper levels of your lives where you are all alone with God the Loving Eternal One, keep up a silent prayer. 'Open Thou my life. Guide my thoughts where I dare not let them go. But Thou darest. Thy will be done.'”

from A Testament of Devotion by Thomas Kelley, Quaker, Harvard professor and follower of Jesus as quoted in Spiritual Classics edited by Richard Foster and Emilie Griffin

As a volunteer chaplain for the Barron County Justice Center, over the years I've heard many inmates utter something akin to a vow that goes generally like this:

I'm done with living the way that got me here. When I get out of here, preacher, I'm gonna come to your church and stay on the straight and narrow. As soon as I get my s**t together, I'm gonna find out what it means to follow Jesus. [And typically after that they add, “Sorry that I said 's**t.'”]

Most of those who say this I think mean it at the time. As bored as they are, they little realize how so many of us on the outside frantically running through our normal days wish we had as little on our plate as they have on theirs at the moment – get up, clean up, eat up, and....read or play cards or watch TV, maybe go to AA. They spend a lot of time thinking about their life on the outside or their family or their girlfriend (or boyfriend). They just want everything to be right, put this behind them and move on. They vow to do better and live better. Unfortunately, so many of them sooner or later find themselves back inside again more demoralized than the last time they were here. The jailers even have an expression to describe people like this: they're “lifers” - they're doing “life” at the BCJC a few months at a time. Given that the average stay at the JC is anywhere between six and twelve months that tells you how sad their plight really is.

My common response to the “When-I-get-out-of-here...” - promise is to stop them in their tracks and tell them they don't have to wait that long before they begin to follow Jesus. They can start right where they are regardless of the block they're on or the complications with their legal case. “Billy” is a case in point. He's one of those guys who's been around, who's known by police officers in several neighboring communities. He has a history of explosive outbursts and psychotic behavior. I met Billy in jail last winter but by the time I returned from the Philippines in late March he had been released and was living somewhere in Barron. We had several conversations before my ministry trip overseas and I had prayed with him every time. He is someone who has been wounded psychologically and in my limited expertise I would say only listening prayer in an environment of love and acceptance coupled with deliverance can ultimately bring him the healing Jesus wants to bring him into. For maybe six months I didn't hear from him and then one day late last summer I got a phone call from Billy. As it turned out, he was still living in Barron at one of the local motels and wondered if I might come and see him.

A few days later when I pulled into the parking lot there was a strong, robust man working in the yard on some project. I didn't know which room Billy was in and so I parked my car and walked toward the man to find out where I might find him. How surprised I was when that man turned out to be Billy. The last time I had seen him he had been in his JC orange jumpsuit and had the look of a harried aging man. Now, he looked as if he had shed ten years and ten pounds from his physique. I don't want to overstate it but his face seemed to beam with some kind of inner joy but it was his eyes that persuaded me that something real had happened to him. They, quite literally, shone.

Aftermath of Joplin

“What happened to you, Billy?” I asked. “I've been to Joplin,” he replied. Last May, Joplin, MO had been devastated by an F4 tornado that killed nearly a 100 people and destroyed perhaps 75% of this southwestern Missouri community. Soon after relief poured in from all four corners and sometime during the summer Billy went south with two lesbians to pitch in (they were his ride). Having helped with the clean-up of Barneveld (Wis.) following the 1984 F5 tornado I can imagine the destruction he witnessed there. But whereas others might see the havoc that nature had caused and wonder, “Where was God?”, Billy looked at the same chaos and came to the conclusion that “'God is here!” As he tells it, it was the awesome cooperation between Christians of many different congregational stripes working together to alleviate the suffering of their Joplin neighbors that persuaded him to find an “800” number of a Christian ministry and speak with an operator to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. Such was the power of that witness that he had asked to see me to tell me of his new-found faith in Christ and to offer to help me get a crew from our fellowship to return to Joplin so that we, too, could be touched by the presence of Jesus there.

Seeing God in the storm

It didn't happen. While his intention was to begin worshiping at our fellowship, he soon entered into a relationship with a woman he met shortly after our conversation. A week or two later, when I stopped in to see him they were already living together. A few years ago when she had lived in Chetek she had worshiped with our fellowship for awhile and several of the women in our congregation, as well as myself, had reached out to her to no avail. In time, she had returned to the world. By the time she was with Billy a few years later she had time to marry and divorce again. I gently encouraged Billy that the number one priority for his life right now was, in fact, developing his relationship with Jesus and offered to drive over to Barron on Sunday to pick him up for worship. That didn't happen, either. Because his new girlfriend had no interest in coming he would not come either. In retrospect, I should have been more blunt and tell him in no uncertain terms: “RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!” When I drove away, I knew it was only a matter of time that both their psychological issues would crash together like atoms in a supercollider. About a month before Christmas, they did. They got into a heated argument and he allegedly head-butted her. She called 911 and because of he has priors he was arrested on the spot and taken back to be a resident at the Barron County Justice Center once again. It took him a few weeks, but one day I got a call from one of the jailers who wondered if I might come and see Billy. Of course, I said I would.

When we saw each other a few days later in Professional Visitation 1, he was down and dejected. He wanted to see me in order to apologize for not heeding my advice back in the fall. I accepted his apology as a matter of form but then I reminded him of Peter's story. He was going to be the guy who would make his last stand next to Jesus. “All these other schmucks may cut and run out on you, but I will never stoop to that kind of cowardice.” Well, we know how that went. The soldiers came by night, there was a brief scuffle and then suddenly Jesus was taken in custody and all the guys skedaddled just as the Rabbi had told them they would. To make matters worse during that long dark night of his soul he had denied knowing Jesus on three successive occasions. When push had come to shove he had so failed his friend and mentor. This was not a surprise to Jesus – he had said as much to Peter after dinner that night: “Before the rooster crows in the dawn you will deny me three times but ...when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32, NIV). The Lord was leaving a breadcrumb trail for Peter to follow later when he was overcome with grief for such a betrayal of friendship. Later, when Peter had glumly told the rest of the company that he was going back to his boat in Galilee, the Lord came looking for him. He and John and the rest of the company had spent a night out on Lake Gennesaret catching a whole lot of nothing. In the early morning, before the sun had cracked the lip of the horizon, a man from the shore had called out to them and asked if they had caught anything. When they yelled back that they hadn't, the man told them to throw their net on the other side of the boat and in short order the thing was full to bursting. Seeing the net fill to capacity, John remembered the day that this had happened before – it had been the day they had left their boats nearly three years before because Jesus had invited them to become his learners and followers. Things had come full circle. In that moment, Jesus was saying to Peter: “So, we start again, right where it all began three years before.”

I don't know how long Billy will be in this time around. Every time I see him he tells me a different time frame but the joy that I saw that day in the parking lot of the motel in Barron has returned to his eyes. He's kept these days in what is referred to as a “Flex Cell.” Think a spartan cement block 8x8 room with just the bare necessities. Due to his history of psychotic behavior he cannot be housed with the other inmates. He's essentially in solitary until he is released. But the other day when I saw him and asked how he was doing he said, “I'm doing excellently.” When I asked him why he said that he was eager to tell me the following story:

A few days ago I heard this girl crying in the next flex cell. She was really crying her eyes out. Hearing her I finally yelled through the cement block asking her if she was alright, and if she needed any help. When she finally settled down I told her that God loves her and that she was not entirely alone. And now every day I tell this 22-year-old girl, “Hey, put a smile on that face because God loves you!”

Amazing. As I listen to him tell this story I reflect on the words of Quaker divine Thomas Kelley that I had just read the week before. “...Begin where you are. Obey now. Use what little obedience you are capable of, even if it be like a grain of mustard seed. Begin where you are...” Billy, for all practical purposes, is in solitary confinement but his daily routine now of yelling through the block wall of his cell to the girl next door – a girl he has never seen – is his way of using what “little obedience he is capable of.” He's not waiting until he gets out of the Justice Center to follow Jesus once more. He's following the bread crumb trail that's been left for him to follow. It's all he can do and it's more than he knows.

As our conversation comes to an end he asks me with a grin on his face, “You're gonna use that story, aren't you?” To wit I reply, “Absolutely. Because it's worth sharing.” To me, it's like a story right out of the Viet Nam conflict where POWS kept in Hỏa Lò Prison (otherwise known as the “Hanoi Hilton”) kept each other's spirits up by tapping out messages of hope and encouragement to one another in Morse code. By such a thin cord are such things kept alive.

The infamous "Hanoi Hilton"