Broken Glass and Thorns

"God spoke to me. I seen a window open in my life...I see a clear path [where] before it was broken glass and thorns."

I received a letter from an organization which helps prisoners avoid re-offending and acclimate to freedom after their time of incarceration is complete. One of the participants in the program said the sentence above when describing a prison chaplain’s sermon.

“Broken glass and thorns.” I don't know if anyone could be more poetic in describing the hopelessness under which some of us suffer. What must it feel like, I wonder, to have lived in such a way that you would describe your life in these terms? What was the history behind that description of misery and despair? Obviously, time in prison means a history of crime; where and when did this person cross the line, and to what purpose? Was it drugs? Money? Alcohol? Violence revenged or simply uncontrolled? Where were the parents, the loving family God intended to surround this person and guide them in good ways of life for the sake of God’s name? Where was the community called to clothe him when he was naked, feed her when she was hungry, visit him while he was in prison? Most importantly, if this person could sense the presence of God in the chaplain’s words, where was God during all that came before?

The image that leapt to my mind was a neglected acreage here in Barrett. Weeds have choked the life out of anything else that tried to grow. Junked out appliances and automobiles of unknown origin or purpose sit rusting inside stands of tall, ugly weeds that do little to hide the ugliness they surround. A house sits crumbling at the end of the driveway, as uninviting as it is unappealing. Plastic sheets from a half-hearted winterization project years ago flap in the breeze, drawing attention to the peeling paint and the sagging roofline.

This kind of choked, trash-strewn ugliness doesn’t just happen. The word “neglect” might imply inaction, but the owner, and our town, has actively taken a course of not caring about what happens there, or at the very least not doing anything to alleviate that neglect. I wonder: does the same hold true for the neglected person? When life has become broken glass and thorns, can the community be held culpable for its neglect of those in need of help?

I wonder if we have perfected the art of semi-conscious neglect in the church, both here in the congregation I serve and in the body of Christ throughout the world. I hate to say this: I love the people to whom I minister, and I know that I myself fall under the same sentence of condemnation. But I also know there are lives all around us that are slowly becoming glass-strewn and weed-choked, and we do little to stop it for those who are not members of our congregations (indeed, one could even draw the circle more tightly and observe that some members of our congregations are suffering from neglect as well). For many Christians, avoiding the “wrong” sort of people is part and parcel of the practice of their faith. I know that I myself have questioned whether we should provide emergency assistance to a family where both parents are heavy smokers, as though the brief respite from despair that nicotine offers should be grounds for immediate denial of aid due to some perceived weakness or moral failing. Every decision like this involves a discernment of worth that God has never intended to be part of the life of faith, yet it happens time and time again in faith communities of every denomination.

Yet I also know that, in spite of our unwillingness, God is indeed at work through some of God’s people who do provide “a clear path [where] before it was broken glass and thorns.” During college in Lincoln, Nebraska I had the opportunity to worship several times with a Lutheran congregation inside the walls of the Nebraska State Penitentiary. Those worship experiences remain some of the most Spirit-filled moments in my life of faith. I was humbled by the deep joy that I sensed in the men who warmly welcomed us and humbly shared how their lives were being transformed by the grace of God; never before and rarely since have I felt such a deep appreciation of forgiveness (offered to those who understood it least) and repentance (the practice of daily turning away from sin, not merely expressing regret for sins past). I know that the same is happening in the church I serve and in other places where God’s transforming word is remaking lives, one piece of broken glass at a time.

The lot in question in our town will take much work to reclaim, work that will not likely happen soon in a rural community with more attractive properties nearby that will require a much less arduous process of reclamation. I hope the same will not be true about this unknown former inmate who has so provoked my thinking and my conscience today. I don’t know the history that led to that description, but I do know the hope that now springs forth from what was once despair. I am a brother to this thought-provoking unknown poet; I also follow of the One who provides the clear path, the narrow way.

I also know that even with that hope, reclamation will be a long process, full of advances and setbacks, and those who observe that reclamation will not always be kind, nor will they understand. Broken glass is notoriously hard to remove without injury, and thorns can require hours of hard labor to dig out, only to have the roots regenerate and the thorns to reappear. I know that as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I come into contact with such reclamation projects on a daily business; may God give me the grace to end my own course of neglect and to cheerfully join in the process of reclamation.

“Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Luke 15.10