Considering Grace in Light of Captivity

I just finished reading about prisons. I caught myself slightly depressed, and it didn’t help that I was in the airport and watching it rain.

I read about Marion Prison in Illinois—previously one of the highest security penitentiaries in the United States— and one that is regularly visiting the courts because its measures are questionably unconstitutional.

I read about how to make alcohol in the toilet with cornflakes and about a guard watching his father being stabbed to death.

I read about how inmates would kill just so they could go to court.  Court meant seeing the outdoors and remembering what grass looked like.

I tried to imagine living in a cell with no windows for 23 hours a day.
Being deprived of family and friends.
of communication.

Of light and colors.

And sanity.

…Essentially being deprived of all freedom and hope and that freedom being replaced with monotony, yelling, beatings, and violence.

Right now I’m some 27,000 feet in the air, watching the sun set, sitting next to one of those 25 year olds that still plays with Pokemon cards.  Though I’m slightly tense because he’s wearing a hood and sunglasses, his obsession which his cards relieve me.  I’m well on my way to visit my buddy Sarah in Phoenix.  I’m stoked.

The prison keeps popping into my head though, and with all of the other deprivations I’m then led to wonder what these people did to get transferred in severe solitude, surrounded by hatred and emitting the darkest bitterness, violence, and trapped in… hell.

The essay ended with a prisoner admitting he deserved his newfound hell.  He said,

“would I try to escape? of course.”

He knew he deserved it and yet it changed nothing.  He was stuck there.

I don’t like captivity, but I was doomed to be just like the prisoner.  Until– knowing the Truth–  I was set free (John 8:32).

I am merely a college student, striving to do what is right, and though I have never murdered anyone and my gun experience is limited to shooting cans with bb gun, my sins damn me to hell.  Hell is worse than the prison.  And I deserve it.

Freedom tastes so much more real when you consider captivity.

I’m going to stare out the window more and thank my Jesus for his death and resurrection which conquer ALL sin.

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