Today I visited a men’s prison, and I saw the most beautiful type of worship: Free. When these men worship, they are free. For that time and moment, they are not constricted to sleeping in a cell like sardines with 200 other men, they are not constricted to participating in the allotted amount of physical activity every day, or living without an electronic device. They are fully known and truly loved by the only one who really matters. Most of the men’s families do not come visit them in the prison, so they feel abandoned by the only loved ones they had. They are left to talk to the walls in order to verbally process their feelings, problems, and conditions. Until God. These men understand forgiveness better than I ever could. They know that they cannot change where they are, but they can change where they’re going. I wish you could hear all of their voices singing the Thai worship songs in unison. They sang all the words and they meant them. During prayer, nobody was looking around or cleaning out their fingernails. They were cross legged and bowing their heads, some were bowing their whole bodies, solely devoting that time to the One God. When my team got up to sing, they intently listened and tried to remember the little English they had learned in school in order to understand some of what we were singing and praying. I saw a few nodding heads, understanding some words here and there. After a song one man called out “beautiful song!!” 🙂 Before we left, a few men came up and thanked us with a bow and a “God bless you”. The same man who called out in English after the song told us, “I will always remember you” and “we are lifelong friends.” They were so thankful that they got to have 3 hours in their day to worship God. Sometimes, our attitude is that we “have to” make time (even 30 min) for Him and we forget the privilege and how precious of a gift it is. Be like the men in the Thai prison. Worship freely and graciously. I say I want to be like them because I want to worship as hard and freely as they do, and I want to take advantage of the blessing of being able to worship God and spend time with Him.
Xoxo
annie
