Today’s find: Deluge

It’s a good 400 paces, maybe 450, heading north from the Visitor’s parking lot to the Gatehouse at Menard Correctional Center. Once inside, you retrace almost every one of those steps, heading south along Front Street, in order to reach the Chapel.

No big deal on a nice day. But when nasty weather rears, the walk can be brutal.

And the weather turned nasty Friday morning – an hour or so after the team made its way into the Chapel for the final day of our Kairos retreat.

Rain pounded and poured, a veritable deluge. Unrelenting, intensifying at times. No big deal for us, since we were already inside (except, perhaps, for the guy next to me who happened to be seated directly below one of the many leaks in the Chapel roof!)

So if we had shelter from the storm, why am I writing about the deluge? Because I had personally invited three guests to attend our Closing Ceremony at noon that day … and I had begun to imagine the long, wet, miserable walk they’d likely have to take in order to join us. 

Little everyday things tend to surprise you when you first enter a maximum security prison – like the fact that umbrellas are not allowed inside. I could well imagine this unanticipated restriction causing my guests to rue their decision to attend. I mean, really: Who wants to go anywhere … only to arrive sopping wet?

So I began to pray under my breath: “Stop the deluge, Lord. Show a tender mercy to these curious and kind-hearted men … as they make the long walk down Front Street today.”

Does it count as a miracle – the fact that the predicted “all-day” rain paused at 11:45 AM? That moisture-laden clouds withheld their menacing payloads for a time, for almost exactly the amount of time needed for my guests to traverse (relatively) dry-shod in and out of the prison on Friday?

It goes down in my book as a miracle, but only a minor one compared to the deluge of grace we’d experienced in the four days leading up to the storm: Participants and team, learning from each other about the curious nature of God’s mercy … about the powerful balm of unconditional love and forgiveness … about the joy and fellowship that can be found, even deep within the bowels of the prison.

In this space last week, I asked you to pray, dear friends, that we’d experience this sort of outcome. So I guess I’m reporting back that the Holy One heard your prayers on our behalf. As our Kairos team leaves Menard, I am amazed once again to see how God works to reconcile the world (every dark and dingy corner of it) to himself in Christ.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be amazed. It’s turning out exactly as God promises us, through the prophet Isaiah (in the reading we hear on this, the Fifth Sunday of Lent):

Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

What a blessing, to have been there for the deluge – and to have this chance now to keep soaking it all in!

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS