Letter from Long Ago

I found myself spending a good deal of time this week reading over the Apostle Paul’s letter to the citizens of Rome. Commentators note that at the time this letter was written it didn’t receive much notice. After all, it was a letter from a prisoner, a citizen of Rome, who in exuberance decided to explain to his countrymen what “God is up to.” Pretty heady stuff, even when ending a sentence in a preposition!

            Paul couldn’t shake the world-altering events from thirty years earlier when time – in his mind – went from “before” to “after.” It meant something profound, something life changing and he wanted to understand it; he wanted to explain it. He had quite literally, seen and talked to God. And that conversation, that moment on a desert road on the way to Damascus changed everything for him. This letter penned to his Roman compatriots was his way of explaining what that moment – that first Easter Sunday was to mean to every man and woman. What is God up to? Paul tells the Romans in passionate prose.

            As I said, I found myself thinking and reading Paul’s words a good bit this week. The A/C unit broke in our building last Sunday. Even with fans running 24 hours a day, it was hot and sticky. The temperature inside hovered near 90°. The air hung heavy with the smells of 76 men crammed together. And guys new to the system whined and carped and bitched. Me? It wasn’t as bad as receiving so I just took two extra showers each day and laughed it off. I learned early on in this adventure to laugh in spite of any of it.

            And a few things had me thinking. One, I was in a meeting with a college person I highly regard. We discovered a problem – VA benefit problem – that is – with a few of our students. I was explaining to her and her associate that men in prison believe the worst. Everything is a lie, a con, a plan to screw them. “There is no optimism in here,” I said. “There are a lot of injured, broken people in this place.”

            Her response caught me off-guard. In a soft voice, she said, “there are a lot of injured people outside.” I thought of Paul. People have a hard time. They screw up; they’re let down; life becomes disillusioning. Paul says, “Shake it off.” God pays no attention to what others say – or think (or even what you think) about you. He makes up His own mind and He always keeps His word, even when the whole world is lying through its teeth. “God,” Paul says, “always sets things right.”

            So often we focus on our failings, our hurts, our wrongs. Life seems hopeless. And the hopelessness, the hurt builds and breaks us even further. Paul says that isn’t what God sees. We criticize, we condemn, we suffer, and God still loves, God still saves.

            What’s all this about? I’ve been thinking a good deal about my future. What I’ve learned through all this is God got me out of the mess I was in. He didn’t do it in the way I wanted – the deus ex machina way where He’d show up and I’d be delivered without consequence – no, He broke me and then He restored me, and He put me where He needed me to be.

            Paul says we learn to shout praise even in the midst of our troubles and trials because we learn troubles build patience and patience forges virtue and virtue keeps us alert to God’s next message. And I get that; I get seeing the positive even in our difficulties.

            Like I said, there are a lot of injured people: people injured by others and themselves. Prison is a reality and a metaphor. The reality is, I’m in prison. I’m doing a sentence for breaking the law and I knew the ramifications of my actions and have to accept the punishment. Fair? Maybe, or maybe not. But, I did the crime, I must do the time.

            Prison, however, is also a mindset. So many are in prison due to hurts, wrongs, and regrets from before. And that prison overwhelms, and stifles, and destroys. The psychologist Viktor Frankl understood that. He saw it in the Nazi death camps; he saw who survived and who gave up. “Meaning,” he found, mattered. Find meaning in your life, in your suffering, and lift yourself beyond the prison. Paul – another Jewish intellectual – must have been smiling. After all, Viktor sounded like he’d read the letter.

            As I started this, the building had cooled. Things were back “as they were.” I was thinking about a picture of her. I haven’t seen her in almost six years. I’d been afraid to; I wasn’t sure how seeing a photo would tear at me. Then the photo came in the mail. She’d aged since we last saw each other (who hasn’t). But I looked and realized, it was ok. The hurt, the anger and frustration, it was gone. I saw a pretty woman and I was able to smile, say “Ok,” and move on. For the first time in years I felt good, just like Paul said I would once I understood.

            Almost 2000 years ago a Roman prisoner penned a letter about God being reliable, a message of hope in a time of despair and difficulty. This week, I finally understood what he meant.