Posted on 07/01/2007 8:29:56 PM PDT by tnarg
“If there is a God, help me!”
I kept seeing this young fellow walking up and down the jail corridors. He was dressed in the usual blue of his pod. What made him distinctive is that he always had in his hand a Bible.
“Why do you carry that book wherever you go?” I inquired one day as Glenn was making his way to work in the facility’s laundry.
“I’ve read it through three times thus far since coming in here,” he answered.
That really didn’t tell me why he was reading it, but it was okay for starters.
The next time I saw Glenn I asked him the same question again. This time he paused, spoke in his gentle, soft voice and said, “Because it gives me the help I need.”
All right. So I was getting closer. I’d let that stand for the moment. But I was so curious as to what made this handsome inmate tick that I asked him the question the another time about a week later. “Why are you reading the Book every time I see you? You take it to the laundry room because I presume that after you have done your chores there, you pause to read a few pages. Right?”
He nodded. Then I learned that he had been desperate when sentenced to jail. He had never known if there was indeed a God. However, he was at the end of his rope with life. Therefore, he cried out, “If there is a God, help me!”
With that, he came upon a Bible in a corner of the jail. He started reading it. He was never approached by a minister or evangelist or religious tract. He was never to hear a sermon in chapel, for there was no chapel nor worship service in the county jail where I was a substance abuse counselor.
“As I have read this book, I have prayed. And in praying and reading the Bible I have found God,” he explained simply.
Glenn was in my substance abuse classes in Cumberland County Jail, Portland, Maine. There I kept a watch on him, noting his responses and his body language. I was quite impressed. He was low-key and kept to himself. But it was the Bible that had become his close companion.
As time moved along, I realized that I had come upon a first-class conversion experience in a fellow sentenced for criminal behavior. The facts of his past were that he had been using every drug possible that could be lodged into the human body — for fifteen years.
“I should have died many times over,” he said. Indeed he should have. He was no respecter of drug misuse. In addition he dealt in big moneys with drug passages throughout the world, traveling to some of those locations to make deals astounding. He hobnobbed with the elite — cocaine and heroine were passed about as candy.
Glenn was also an alcoholic. Drinking night and day, he bunked down wherever. With that, he was never without companions — drug users and drinkers maximum. He’d drop to sleep after heavy drinking and drugging, then wake up to find several bodies leaning over him to start up chatter again. There was never a private moment, a dull moment, but rarely a sober, sane moment.
Fifteen years. Drugs. Alcohol. Near the edge of life’s cliff was daily fare.
Finally Glenn’s world caved in, facing a judge who sentenced the fellow to an 8-foot cell. And that’s where the two of us met: I an ordained minister in substance abuse work and he a felon.
“When you get out of here, I want to you attend a church that preaches what that Bible has told you. There you will find Christian friends who are sober and moral. There you will find a new way of living with new friends who call themselves ‘believers.’”
He agreed. Upon his release he went to that congregation I had recommended. God opened up further doors including an apartment near the church. He could walk to church for he had lost his license because of his criminal past. He also had a job that paid the bills. In his mid-thirties, Glenn was starting over.
“There’s nothing like waking up in the morning with coffee in hand, walking outside to take in the breezes and talk to God. I never knew this kind of life was possible. I’ve lost fifteen years of my life.”
So he continued being faithful to Bible study, prayer and worship, keeping himself from sin and connections of an evil past.
In time God led him to a Christian wife. They have married and built a beautiful home in the country.
Glenn and I have become very close since his “jail days.” He calls me “Dad.” I call him “Son.” His biological father died of an alcohol-related auto accident when Glenn was 16.
Glenn’s life has been bereft of a father; but now the Lord has led him to “Dad.” I have been saddened by an adopted son who drifted away from God and family; but now the Lord has provided a “Son.”
On my last birthday, Glenn wrote on my greeting card: “To me you are still young and I love being around you. #1 Son. . .”
I visited Glenn today for lunch. We talked over “old times.” His Christian testimony is as alive as ever. As I looked into Glenn’s happy face, I was overjoyed. Seated across the table from me was one clear-cased grace wonder, for certain.
That’s why I believe in miracles. Thank you, Glenn. Thank you, God.
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