Stories that come out of Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministry fill me with quiet, awe-ful joy.
This incident, whether you have heard it before or not, will do the same for you.
Colson relates it this way: He had been conducting a seminar in the Indiana State Prison just a few weeks after a man had been electrocuted. As soon as the seminar was finished, Colson, impatient to get away to keep a commitment to meet with the governor, urged his party of volunteers to hurry and join him on the plane that was waiting on the runway to take him to his important appointment.
One volunteer lingered, speaking to a prisoner who had, as Colson knew, just become a Christian recently.
"Let's go," Colson urged. "It is late."
The volunteer said, "Just a minute, please."
"No," Colson answered in an impatient tone, "Time's up. We must get going."
The volunteer replied, "Please, please, this is very important. You see, I am Judge Clement. I sentenced this man to die. But now he is born again. He is my brother, and we want a minute to pray together."
Colson tells now how he stood frozen in place. Before him stood two men -- one black and one white. One powerful and one powerless. One condemned to die and the other the judge who pronounced that sentence. Yet they stood next to each other, grasping a Bible together, united in prayer as one Christian brother with another.
Is there any force in the world more powerful than the ministry of the Holy Spirit?
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