Last week was Maicah’s birthday. She’s one of the inmates in the jail we’ve been working with and she also mentioned that she had never had a real birthday cake. Good thing for her, we had a couple of World Racers with big hearts and big enough wallets (all of $4) to make this birthday wish come true. It was such a fun day because both of Maicah’s children were able to join her as well. No matter how shy she tried to act, we still sang to her, cut the cake and had a fun time of fellowship behind bars and barbed wire.
As we sat around in a circle, eating cake, and laughing at each other’s attempts on a foreign language, it was hard to think we were in a prison. I looked around the circle and sitting beside the World Racers were my translators and the inmates themselves. Not a single person seemed scared, intimidated, or even a little out of place. We just were. We were being the body and giving a glimpse of unconditional love to each other. The inmates saw Americans not only come to visit, but sit down and have cake and conversation together. The Americans saw that love doesn’t always have to be difficult.
This is the one thing that I’ve loved about the prison ministry. Sure, you can remind me that these people are still prisoners and behind bars for a reason. But I can also argue that if we really took Jesus’ sermon from Matthew 5 seriously, we’d all be in there with them. Someone once told me that we are all born with a dark, unrelentingly dangerous heart that is capable of anything. I always thought that there was no way I could ever in my life kill someone. But would my answer change if I had an unredeemed heart, my family had been starving for a while, and I had a meal ticket right in front of me? We can’t be too quick to condemn because we have no idea what we are capable of (plus Jesus says he’s the judge, so I’ll buy into that).
Don’t get me wrong, unconditional love is one of the hardest ideas to grasp. I don’t think any of us ever truly gets a good enough picture of it. My parents’ love for me is about the closest thing I have ever seen to that, and that even pales in comparison to God’s love for us. And yes, even the darkest ones amongst us.
Two years ago, I never thought I’d be in a foreign country, much less, a prison in a foreign country. I’ve always loved how Jesus ate with sinners and the lowest of the low, but that picture is becoming more real to me. Truly loving someone can cost you everything you have. But being that picture of love for someone in darkness, can sometimes only cost about $4.
