I gown up in all the isolation attire and walk into his room in the ICU. His monitors are beeping, lights flashing, and he is gasping for breath. His entire body is swollen with sickness. His arms are so big that his hand cuffs are unimaginably tight. I start talking to him and take his hand. I try simply holding both hands for a moment. He looks up at me and speaks one painful word at a time between labored breaths. "I. Am. So. Scared." We talk, for as long as his body will allow, and I leave to let him rest. I walk past his guard and start removing the isolation gown. "You know what he did mam"? I look at the guard. "No" I tell him. And I walked out of the room. "Do you want to know"? "No" I said again.
In another room at another time and another person. There is this tiny frame bundled under blankets. He looks cold and miserable. As he pulls the blanket up over his head, the guard yells at him loud enough to terrify all of us. "Get that off your head now!" I reach up and pull the blanket down. I square off with the guard asking if he is allowed a hat since he is so cold. "I guess so" says the guard. As I leave to find a hat, I see this geniune smile just barely over the blanket. "You know what he did right"? I look toward the guard. In a second, I size up this guard and decide he will not be of any assistance in acutal crisis. "Nope" I tell him.
I don't want to know. There was a time when I did. Or when I looked it up myself. There was a time when it mattered. But it doesn't anymore. They are dying. I can walk in and simply see them as human beings taking the journey that is destined for us all, criminal or not. I can more geniunly hold their hand, look into their eyes, listen to their hearts, or let them yell in anger if I do not know. Their past is really of no significance to me in this moment, because they need my love and care.
If I know, if I find out that they robbed a bank, or murdered someone, or assualted a female, or a DUI, or stock fraud, or child abuse, I can't do anything with that knowledge. I still do my best to serve them, even when I know. When the guards treat them as less then human, most prisoners develop a hatred for the guard. It becomes a lovely cycle. It makes me think of a verse in Lamentations 3:39- "Why should any living mortal, or any man, offer complaint in view of his sin"? The guards come with a set of rules the prisoners must follow. The prisoner really has no right to complain, since he chose to commit a crime. But, what about me? Lamentations doesn't just apply to prisoners. I have sinned too. A lot. In view of my own sin, I really don't have any right to complain either. I deserve a punishment too.
This has given me such a different perspective on verses like Jeremiah 31:31 “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” We talk a lot in the church about God forgiving us and forgetting our sins. The magnitude of His forgetfullness hits me every time I think of our prisoners. Perhaps, God chooses to forget, because it is how He forgives. It's how He makes us clean. When we ask for His forgiveness, Jesus' blood cleanses us, washing away it all, including the memory. Because, well, because God tell us that He chooses to forget. It's grace and mercy in the same moment. The grace of forgiveness and the mercy of letting it go. As far as the east is from the west. Our sin is gone.
I imagine a day in my future. Standing before a throne surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses. I can imagine feeling afraid, small, and unsure while taking in such extreme Holiness. I can see Satan running to God and saying, "You want to know what she did"?
And as I tremble, I can feel my Savior take both my hands in His and simply say, "No".
