I believe we can all wrap our minds around the concept of power for it resides all around us. It has many faces, many sounds, many smells, many reactions, many implications but power, we understand! The concept of humility, I believe, gets, many times, lost in the winds of rhetoric for people will tend to use the prism of weakness or ineptness when meandering down the pathway of humility. So when you link Power and Humility together in a subject of a blog, it feels strange and incongruent; and I am the one doing the writing!
In my life I have been privileged to work with some really great people and some very powerful men and women. I have always been drawn to that turbine of energy that powerful leaders exude not necessarily to copy it but to understand it. It is amazing! If you have been in the presence of celebrity, a national level politician, a professional athlete, a great preacher, etc, you know that feeling of awe that consumes the air you breathe whether you wish to admit it or not. I believe, properly aimed and channelled, that turbine can generate great change. I remember as a young second lieutenant listening to and shaking hands with General William C. Westmoreland that commanded all troops in Vietnam. I remember having fifteen minutes in the snow in Cleveland with Doug Collins and Michael Jordan. I could expand the list to a very long list of interesting people I have met on this journey. How does that affect me personally at the time? Most would not believe it but I find it hard to piece together tangential sentences meaning words get stuck somewhere and I babble like an idiot. that is Power and it makes each of us react in our own unique and usually out of context way reacting to it.
Then there is humility. For me the best example that comes to my mind would be Jesus. He was meek which for me is defined as strength and power under control. Humility, for me, is when you find yourself with absolutely no where else to turn, nobody to turn to and you have no answers; it is a sense of complete emptiness which can be devastating for many including myself. Many of you that know me know I have worked now over a decade in jail and prison ministry. I cannot begin to tell you how many sermons, Bible references, examples, songs sung, questions being asked, etc. I have listened to and participated it. I can tell you that what I am realizing more and more is that i am seeing more and more very real examples of true humility in the population of the inmates.
Many will scoff at that and I can understand that to a degree but in having now worked with over 200,000 inmates, I feel I have learned much about the psychology of inmates. There is no crime that will shock me anymore. There is no tattoo that will cause me to take pause. I hate the smells, the misfitting orange jumpsuits and worst of all the strange beige colored shower shoes the inmates wear. I realized of late that I had allowed myself to get too hung up on the way things look and smell but have realized a tremendous shift in my heart for these men and women I see almost on a weekly basis. Last night was a classic example of how this decade has changed me; at the heart!
When God's presence is there in the chapel and you are leading nearly forty men of all ages, several ethnicities, innumerable crimes, dozens of fatherless children somewhere needing their dads at home with them, it makes my heart hurt. Last night a young African-American man stood and asked if he could give his testimony which, of course, we allowed. It was touching, sincere and came from a fellow inmate. I saw a whole complexion change for I saw eyes stop wandering, I saw tears from grizzled looking men, I saw and felt humility abound in that moment. It was amazing.
As I stood to end the service before the deputies took the inmates back to their cells, I had the group of forty to stand around me and to put their hand of a fellow inmate meaning each inmate was touching two other inmates as I held two inmates close to my sides. I prayed but it was so uniquely different in that close proximity of men that were hurting, fearful, disappointed but had been touched by the Hand of God through the songs, the sermon and the testimony! That was Power of Humility personified. It was absolutely and uniquely exhausted when I got home after the two back-to-back services for both were powerful in the presence of God!
Most of you will never see the inside of a jail or a hospital or anywhere where people are hurting, celled and truly frightened about what tomorrow will bring. I look at these men and women and see a future meaning a future that they have chosen through poor choices to be left behind in the opportunities of our nation. Each time I leave the jail tired, I leave those men and those women with a sense of hope and challenge for their obstacles are myriad worse due to be incarcerated. But as I sit in my care to ready for the drive home, I realize all over again that it is I that has received the blessing for the work, the energy, the time away from family, the sacrifice but it is such a blessing. It is always my greatest hope that the seeds are planted and that God will raise the fruit for harvest; He will!
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