More Than Enough

More than Enough

Jail, I’ve discovered, is pretty much the way it looks on television. It’s not in the best part of town. It’s not exactly clean. A crowd, mostly female, assembles long before visiting hours begin. But I didn’t go to jail because I wanted to authenticate my picture of it—I went because I couldn’t comfortably stay home. Someone I cared for was there.

The inmate visit is TV-drama-like too. A deputy calls your name, and you enter a short corridor with five plastic chairs and a glass wall separating those five chairs from five others. What is not like television—what is far too real and gut wrenching—is seeing a kid you love walk in wearing orange clothes and a plastic wristband, head shaved and shoulders sagging. What will break your heart in an instant is seeing him sit down in front of you, look you in the eyes, and mouth the words “I’m sorry.”

The oddest thing to me about jail is how ordinary it seems for those visiting. I was crying during my visit, but the people on either side of me were having conversations about everyday things as if no glass were separating them from their loved ones, as if coming downtown to talk to someone you love while a deputy holds your belongings were normal.

The worst thing about jail is the knowledge that the real bars, the ones that will not be opened in thirty or forty-five or ninety days, are the ones that surround the human heart. And the real prisoners aren’t the ones who can’t walk out the door. The real prisoners are the ones who can’t feel forgiveness and find hope. Because without an abundance of both, most of these prisoners will almost surely return to their physical cells.

I don’t ache because no key to my lost sheep’s personal jail exists. I ache because I hold the key that would bring freedom, and I would willingly give it to him if he would only reach out his hand to take it. It’s a grace-shaped key, and it’s more than enough.

Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans 5:20-21, NASB