Al Kyte's Life Take-Aways

    

“Can I give you a bag lunch?”  The man smiled and replied to my question, “Yes, that will give me something to eat tonight.  Thank you.”  He was an older man, black, apparently homeless, yet exuding a certain dignity and spirit of joy.  A few of us were giving out provisions—food, water, socks, and hygiene kits—as we frequently did on the streets of west Oakland.

I continued, “Do you know Jesus?”  He laughed heartily and said, “Oh yes.  I will always exalt my Lord and Savior.”  A little startled, I asked again,  “How did you come to have such a strong belief?”  So he told me his story:

He told me he had hung out with the Black Panthers as a young man, and one day during a riot someone got killed.  He said, “ I was accused of it, arrested, convicted, and soon found myself on death row awaiting a date of execution.  My mother was allowed to visit me for half an hour each week.  Whatever else we talked about, she would pray two prayers.  She prayed that I would find the Lord, and that she would live long enough to see me free on the streets again.  After a few more weeks, I tried praying for the first time.  ‘Lord, if you’re real, get me off of death row, and I promise to follow you all the days of my life, even if spent in prison.’

Soon thereafter, I was told that my case had been reviewed and my sentence, reduced to life imprisonment.  My prayer had been answered, and I began to hold up my end of our bargain—by attending prison Bible studies, asking my mother questions, and trying to change my way of living according to what I was learning.  My mother’s first prayer had been answered, so she could now concentrate on her other prayer—seeing me free on the streets.  Yet that wasn’t likely to happen.  I still had a life sentence.  But my mother would not be discouraged.”  

As I listened, it struck me that this man’s mother was living 2 Corinthians 4:18, which directs our focus to what we cannot see.  “For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”  Both her mind and senses must have been telling her there was little hope, but, in her faith, she was somehow able to block that out and keep her vision on her God—who she could not see. 

He continued, “Weeks became months and months became years, yet my mother was always there with her prayer of faith.  I tried to be a model prisoner, and after awhile my sentence started being reduced one step at a time.  Much later, the day finally came when I was released.  Looking back, I realized that when my mother first spoke that prayer, her hair had been brown.  As she continued praying, it had turned gray.  And the final time she prayed it before seeing me free, her hair was white.  Yet she had never let up on that prayer nor stopped believing.” 

In Hebrews 11:1, we read, “faith is the substance of things hoped for”—that woman seeing her son free again.  That substance, once so unlikely and far in the future, had now come to pass.  

Finally, that man told me that his mother had since passed away, and that he had picked up her mantle of faith.  “Yes,” he repeated as he turned to go, “I will always exalt my Lord and Savior.”