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Barbara Brown Taylor, Bible Study, cell, cellie, friends, Jesus, Lord's Prayer, pray, prayer, Prison
“So I say to you ask , and it will be given you; see, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Luke 11:9
I was reading a book by Barbara Brown Taylor that my friend Sherry sent to me. This was a month or more ago before I transitioned to another prison system and had to give up my books. Rev. Taylor was writing about prayer, and she said that she had a hard time talking about “answered” prayers. Who was she, she said, to judge whether a prayer is answered or not? For that matter, who are any of us to claim to know the workings of God’s great plan for the universe? Sometimes prayers may seem like wasted breath, as we ask God over and over for help for ourselves or those we love.
And yet Jesus tells us to pray and not give up. In Luke 11, right after giving the Lord’s Prayer to his disciples, he tells them a story about a man who receives an unexpected visit from a friend late at night, and discovers he has nothing to feed his friend. You know how it works – people come to your house and you feed them. That’s hospitality. So the man with no food goes to his neighbor at midnight and bangs on his door, asking for a loan of three loaves of bread. The neighbor, from his bed, tells the man to go away. And Jesus says, “I say to you, though he will not rise and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of his persistent knocking on the door the man will get out of bed and give the neighbor what he needs.” And then Jesus tells us the famous, “Ask…seek…knock…” verse.
On December 10 I was sitting in a transitional cell, wearing a white jumpsuit that I had been wearing for 8 straight days. The is was an initial quarantine to make sure I didn’t have TB, lice, or any other communicable diseases. From the white jumpsuit I would go to yet another type of temporary block to await transport to another state facility. The wait averaged 6 weeks to 3 months. Until that time was completed, I would not be able to have a visit with anyone. I had been sitting in the white jumpsuit, locked down all day, for longer than normal. The average was 3-5 days. And my cellie, who sounded like Eeyore the donkey, kept saying, “Well it figures. Another day and nothing happens. We’ll be here forever. We must be lost in the system. They probably forgot about us. I hate it here. We’ll never get out of this jumpsuit.”
But on the morning of December 10, late in the morning, a CO told us that something different was happening. A bus was going on December 11 to the other state facility, so some of us would bypass the 6 week to 3 month waiting period and move ahead in the process, effectively jumping ahead in the line. If he gave us a paper bag to put our clothes and toiletries in, we would be moving the next day.
About 60 miles away, my mother was at her Tuesday morning Bible study with a fantastic group of faithful women at her church. The were praying for me, and Mom wrote later that day that I was “definitely on the prayer list.” I found this out later in a letter from my Mom.
Around lunch time, the CO brought me a brown paper bag. I was moving on. My cellie did not receive a bag, and droned on, “It figures – Well have fun where you’re going. I’ll be here forever. I’ll probably be in this cell forever.” I tried to encourage him to hang in there, but he was not to be consoled. “This sucks. Prison sucks,” he whined. “I’m never getting out of here.”
The next day I was on a bus and much, much closer to being able to visit with my wife and family. It would still be a long process to get to that day, but I was on the bus with people who had been in processing limbo since October!
Sometimes it’s hard to spot an answered prayer, and sometimes God just smacks you upside the head with it. And so I thank God for all the prayerful people out there, especially all the women at that Bible study in that little faithful church. Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking. And I’ll be doing the same for you as this journey continues! And when we see those prayers so clearly and obviously answered, we will rejoice and give thanks! God is good! All the time!