Kairos - God's Perfect Time

     As I am writing this, the day I returned from prison, I'm wishing I could talk to you personally, and tell you how great my experience has been. I would like for you to understand the raw emotion of those four days that is still present in every fiber of my being. But I would never get through it. I was never this way in my earlier life. I spent a little time several years ago living with the Indians in the remote mountains of Peru. I was so affected by these Indians, in some strange way, that I became, forever it seems, an emotional person. I have trouble getting through any even mildly emotional talk.

But I can easily tell you from my computer. Alone in my room, at my keyboard, nobody sees my tears. Nobody hears me choke up. But in my writing, this sensitivity helps. If my writing does not bring tears, I know it’s not good. Not interesting. I erase and start over. Should I be ashamed of this weakness? Years ago I would have been. Men don’t cry. But maybe men who don’t cry have never really experienced raw, real  life fully. Do you think maybe that could be true? I don’t know. Now, I simply regard it as a valuable working tool. I just use it, and go on.

I’m always so emotionally drained when I return home to my wonderful life, my loving wife of forty seven years, my friends, my church, and my readers that I just can’t. Too many memories are just too fresh. Memories of 21 men, as God’s vessels, living and working with 24 men in white for four days. God, working through us, has given them back a degree of self-respect. He has assured them, using us as his example, that He, through the blood of Christ, can forgive them; that ALL their sins can be forgiven. He has shown them, through us, that they all are loved unconditionally. Shown, through the prayer chains, posters, and prayer wishes that were literally pouring in from all over the world daily, (Kairos is present in 8 countries) that they were, at that moment, being prayed for by thousands and thousands. God raised them to the mountain top. By the fourth day, I remember how so many are on fire for Christ, quickly and tearfully proclaiming their new life with Jesus, to all who would listen. Again and again. Then, our job was to listen, listen, love, love. But we eventually had to leave, many crying, most all hugging. We 21 men then came home to our wonderful lives. They, in turn, went back to their own version of Hell on Earth.

But I have to keep telling myself that they now have something that no man, no degree of degradation, can remove from them. Stay strong, my brothers. They have each other, and Kairos will be by their side all the way. Each Thursday night, God sends a group of Kairos men from their homes all over Arkansas back to Pine Bluff Prison to be at the church service put on by the Kairos graduates themselves, just to hug them again and add support. Saturday, Kairos will be there at the first week’s reunion of Kairos Walk 40. There are many other Kairos graduates still there at Pine Bluff, who still remain strong support for these 24 men, all the way back to Walk 1, 20 years ago.

We NEVER ask why they are there. We are not there to judge them. God can forgive them of anything. I prefer to never know. I could easily go online, and find out. But could I be strong enough to do the work God directs me to do there if I knew the man next to me was a child killer? I wonder. But, many often do tell us of their sins, as we do of ours, if the mood strikes. Then our job is to listen, listen, love, love.

 I hear many stories of broken, breaking, and doubtful marriages, of men who have only seen their daughter once, (on television) since 2006. Of men who have never gotten a letter. Of a man who is so happy that his wife is apparently sticking by him, that he commissioned the local tattoo artist to put her name on his face, using a staple he had straightened out and sharpened, then used a cloth to apply his own version of homemade ink. For two cans of soup in payment. Shocked as I was, the job looked professional. The man on my left was a very rich drug distributor, on his first trip through Arkansas. He was driving his Bentley. He got stopped with a full load. His closest family is in Arizona. They visited him last week.

  The main speech at the closing ceremony was delivered by the man who was at my left a year ago, the first time I was a table leader. Walk 38. One of my men. One of God’s success stories. He has been a regular Thursday night man at the services, always the servant. I see him every time I go. He told me once, “I know I have a very friendly face, and I’m always joking around.” Then he got really serious. “But I have to tell you. My face is a killer’s face.” He served  cookies at Walk 40 to his brothers. He was helped by the man on my right at Walk 37. A true servant of God. He and I discussed his great opportunity open to him to be one of God’s missionaries in a very fertile mission field for the remainder of his sentence. He has been true to that charge given to him by God at Walk 37, he told me this week. But the regret he has felt every day since the day he pulled the trigger is still there.

My dear friend and roommate at Pine Bluff led this walk. A man is only allowed to lead a walk once in his lifetime, lest he become prideful. He is a man God sends not only to Pine Bluff, but to every prison he can get into. And he normally works alone, out in the general population. The men in white tell him he MUST have spent years sentenced to prison; he has the walk, the talk, the mannerisms of prison. But he tells them no. This is the work God put him on earth to do. And God would never send him into prison without preparing him, giving him the tools to work with. The leader of the White Supremacy group at a prison is talking to him. My friend is black. “My job here is to break men like you.” Then, as he bursts out crying, he adds, “But I don’t want to do that anymore.”

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The word Kairos means "Time."  There is chronological time, and there is Kairos time. 
If a doctor tells you the baby is due on Oct. 20, 2014, Yet you experience labor pains on Oct. 10, 2014, and you tell your husband it is time, he may say, "No, it's not due until October 20. Go back to sleep." That's chronological time. If the baby arrives on Oct. 10, just as you now predict, that's Kairos time. God's perfect time.

     I will be leading Walk 43 next February. Not because I'm a great leader, but because I'm the only man left with enough experience who has not yet led, and is willing to. It's a large task for someone with little computer expertise, but God and my computer-savvy friends and I will get it done. Pray for me.