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The iron gate slammed home as we made our way into the holding cells on death row at Angola State Penitentiary.  The echo through the hall was the only sound as we each wrestled within our own prison of thoughts and trepidations.  Thousands of miles from the comforts of suburbia and a week into the adventure I’d so earnestly sought, second thoughts quickly turned to thirds and fourths.  How different, how utterly contrasting were these base and stark surroundings from the bedazzled posters advertising a trip to Louisiana for spring break.  As with any new experience, anxieties over new relationships and transitioning to a different, though short-lived, way of life (e.g. waking up in a supposed prison safehouse to find a life-sentence inmate sweeping the floor next to your bunk) stretched and twisted each in uncomfortable new directions.  As with any.  But this, what was this?  No, no, I’m not going to just stretch and twist…I’m going yank and snap you in two.  Those sound like the words of an all-loving, personal, sovereign God, right?  But it wasn’t about me.

The ice-breakers I’d memorized and the briefing we’d just been given turned to soup in my mind as a buzzer ushered us into the passageway.  Reluctantly, my feet began to move forward as I gazed timidly through the bars and into the eyes of the outcasts of this world.  I moved slowly, not wanting to be alone but joining in here and there as those with more proficient tongues than I made their way into the lives of these prisoners.  A friendly smile, perhaps a word or two of encouragement as I grappled for some common ground were the best I could offer most of these men.  I continued on my own, finding a cell that had eluded the attention of the others.  As I peered into the darkness a strong, set black face looked fiercely back at mine.  I cannot remember his name.  I cannot remember what we said.  What I recall without hesitation was the way his weathered hands reached through the bars and found mine as he asked if he could pray for me.  The sincerity in the eyes of one condemned to death is not something that can be spoken or justified; it does not need to be.  And true faith in one of the darkest places imaginable has things written all over it that I cannot begin to touch. 

How beautiful the mystery, and how loudly does Heaven sing.