Tuesday, October 4th, 2022
Yesterday (every Monday) was my chaplain day at the county jail I serve as a volunteer chaplain.
I had received an email from one of the program officers the day before (Sunday):
“See request below from [the name of the young woman]. She would like to meet with you if you can add her to your list.”
“Can I please talk to Patrick Day? I’m reading a book right now by him and I have a couple questions about God.”
My response back was, “Of course I’ll meet with her.”
The room in which the jail has me meet with inmates is a small meeting room with two huge windows that take up the wall next to the hallway. The young lady (only 20 years old) came into the room at 4:05 p.m. Hers was a sad tale of being bullied by a boyfriend into doing something that would have gone down as a tragic accident but ended up being leaving the scene of an accident, a felony. There’s much more to the story, of course.
“What do you want to ask me about?” I said to her.
“I read in your book about getting saved, but I have questions about how to go about it. Can you explain it to me?”
Can you imagine a chaplain getting a question like that? Whoop-de-do, I thought. This is like a home-run hitter in baseball getting a fast ball right over the plate in his prime hitting zone. If you’re kind of or really interested in what I went over with her, you could check it out in one of the two books of mine she had with her – 7 STEPS TO TURN YOUR DARKNESS INTO LIGHT or THE BIBLE REVEALED IN 10 STORIES. They’re both available on Amazon or any other on-line seller of books.
That young woman walked into that room as a lost soul, and at 4:40 p.m. she became saved. There were no flashing lights or claps of thunder or her jumping up yelling, “Hallelujah,” but she put her hands on her chest just below her neck and told me she felt right there that something moved in her. That was important for me to hear that. Sometimes people think they are saved in their minds but that hasn’t been translated to their hearts. I could tell with her that it was the real deal.
Just before she left the room at 4:50, five minutes past the time we were supposed to end, I said to her question of how she’d know for sure she was saved. “Take a look at what God has done in your life. You grabbed one of my books off the book cart and started reading it with purpose. Then the Holy Spirit prompted you to send a message to a programs officer asking to meet with me. He contacted me (that doesn’t always happen) and I put you on my list of “must talk to inmates.” These were not a string of coincidences. God had you in His sights and brought you to the point of your accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior. You’ll find yourself thinking differently now and being led by the Holy Spirit into following Jesus.”
Her last words as she went out the door were,
“I’m gonna to call my grandma right away and tell her I’ve been saved. That will mean a lot to her cause she’s the one who always talks to me about her faith.”
I thought to myself when I heard that. I expect that grandma has been praying for that young lady’s soul for a long time, and I expect her first thought when she gets the news will be – “Whoop-De-Doo, my little angel has been saved.”