"Don't you realize you're violating our privileges here? When we're asked to leave, we leave!"
—Charles Coleson
For four years, Charles Coleson was Special Counsel to the President of the United States. He wielded tremendous power and enjoyed all the perks that status and influence provides, but it all came tumbling down. Pleading guilty to the charge of obstructing justice in the 1974 Watergate investigation brought him a seven-month stint in federal prison. His life was ruined.
Like many who are incarcerated, he felt shame, loneliness, and loss. Instead of finely tailored suits and a classy Washington D.C. home, he was issued a jumpsuit and locked away in a small cell. How could he have lied, brought down not only himself, but his family? Guilt and unforgiveness haunted him. But, through the pages of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, he not only found Christ, he found his true calling. After release, in 1976, Coleson founded Prison Fellowship and set about building an organization that would bring the gospel of Jesus into prisons and jails across the nation.
He told the story of taking a group of people into the Indiana State Penitentiary to conduct a worship service with inmates on death row. Following the service, as the visitors were checking out, he realized one of them was missing. Coleson rushed back to the cellblock to find that one of his ministry team, was sitting in a cell with his arm around a death row inmate. Coleson was frantic. Prisons are very strict about the movement of visitors within their walls. A lone visitor straggling behind on death row could mean hostage-taking or much much worse.
Coleson shouted. "When we’re asked to leave, we leave! You can cause trouble for us by lingering behind like this!" The visitor slowly looked up. He said, “This brother is James Brewer. He’s condemned to die, and I am Judge Clement, who pronounced the sentence on him. Forgive me for lingering behind, but we both needed some time to forgive each other.”
Forgiving others may take time, but as C.S. Lewis wrote, "To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."
We are all inexcusable. It's this easy and this hard: Forgive others and thank God for forgiving you,
Jim
