In 1982, Chuck Colson brought a team of Prison Fellowship workers to the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
There they led a worship service for the inmates, including a number of offenders on Death Row.
Colson spoke movingly of God’s gifts of hope, healing, and forgiveness, available to everyone.
Then he looked at his watch. His schedule was tight. A plane was waiting to fly him to a meeting with Governor Robert D. Orr.
As Colson recounts in his book Loving God, “After we finished ‘Amazing Grace’ we said our goodbyes and began filing out. We were crowded into the caged area between two massive gates when we noticed one volunteer had stayed back.”
No one could leave until all the volunteers were accounted for.
Colson strode back down the corridor and found the volunteer, a white fifty-something man, inside the cell of James Brewer, a young black inmate who had been convicted of committing murder during a 1977 home invasion in northwestern Indiana.
“I’m sorry, we have to leave,” Colson said.
That’s when he noticed the two men were standing shoulder to shoulder and looking down at a Bible. “Oh, yes,” the volunteer acknowledged. “Give us a minute, please.” Then he added in a soft voice, “This is important.”
Important?
Colson was miffed. Meeting with the governor – now that was important.
Who did this guy think he was?
“’No, I’m sorry,’ I snapped. ‘I can’t keep the governor waiting. We must go.’”
“I understand,” the volunteer replied, in a gentle voice, “but this is important. You see, I’m Judge Clement. I’m the man who sentenced James here to die. But now he’s my brother and we want a minute to pray together.”
James L. Clement had been praying for James Brewer every day for four years, ever since he had sentenced him to death in a Lake County courthouse.
Colson writes, “I stood frozen in the cell doorway. It didn’t matter who I kept waiting.
“Before me were two men: one was powerless, the other powerful; one was black, the other white; one had sentenced the other to death. Anywhere other than the kingdom of God, that inmate might have killed that judge with his bare hands—or wanted to, anyway. Now they were one, their faces reflecting an indescribable expression of love as they prayed together.”
Sometimes the greatest acts of healing take place far away from hospitals.
And sometimes the greatest moments of freedom happen behind prison bars.
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