The last couple of readings from Yancey I really loved. In a two-part devotion he speaks about his experiences of finding God in unusual places, specifically here of his experiences with prison ministry. Not something most of us have much contact with, nor is it something most of us probably want to find ourselves doing, nor do we think of God in such places.
Yancey speaks of going to a prison in Chile where he meets a prison evangelist. This man engages a large group of prisoners, men with tattered clothes, men with scars that said something about their pasts. But when the evangelist starts sharing his message the men listen. They hear about a fellow prisoner, a man who was an atheist when he went to prison, but who could only find one book to read, the Bible. Within three months he was transformed, so much so that he was leading Bible studies. He was released from prison early, but he didn’t forget the men. He continued to go back, to bring food, and to bring the Gospel. This was no simple jailhouse conversion.
Yancey then speaks of a prison in Africa. The worst cesspool you could ever imagine he says. The space was meant for the worst offenders, many of the men were waiting to be executed. They were cramped together, too many in the small space to lie down. No freedom to even move. No activity allowed. No sanitation in that horrible place. And yet as he approached and as the evangelist told these prisoners who was coming, the men got up, got together in rows, and began to sing hymns in four part harmony. He looked and what did he see on the walls in that horrible place? Nothing else but a beautiful chalk drawing of Jesus on the cross.
These men understood something, even with the horror of where they were (and yes, why they were there), Jesus was with them too. Jesus had gone to the cross to forgive them and to know their suffering as well.
This is pretty challenging stuff. To think of Jesus in a place like this, both because of how horrible it is, and becuase of what many of these men probably had done to get them there. But it’s the truth. That’s how big God’s grace is.
There is nothing we can do that Christ’s death didn’t already pay for. There is no place in our lives so horrible, so low, that Jesus Christ is not there with us.
And so on the normal days, the days most of us have, the ones where we’re annoyed because it’s still raining, or we’re still waiting for something, or still struggling with money or a nagging sickness, or a sin that we haven’t quite put away, isn’t Jesus there too. Even in the mundane. Even in those places, we can find Christ.
