Riven - Jerry B. Jenkins [176]
Death Row
Brady found himself depressed the next morning. The anticipation of real reading material with some substance had faded to frustration. There was no explaining the pace of prison procedures. For all he knew, the chaplain had left on vacation or had forgotten to get the stuff into the mail delivery system, or someone had absconded with everything, knowing it would frustrate him.
The bad thoughts came roaring back, and he was in a foul mood when officers came to lead him to his regular shave and shower. That never got easier—the humiliation of the cuffing and uncuffing, the pat down, showering in front of officers, the cavity search. He just gritted his teeth and tried to zone out, but even that opened him to the memories that had seemed to poison his mind.
It wasn’t until he was back and his cell had been thrice locked, per procedure, that Brady realized the stuff from the chaplain had been delivered and lay on his table. This was better than all that had come to him following his probationary period.
He grabbed his sheet and gave it a look, noticing at the bottom a line that wasn’t a verse reference. The chaplain had written, “The Romans Road.” Was that in the Bible?
He tore open the envelope, only to hear men start to yell at him.
“Package from home, sweet cakes?”
“Get any cookies? Share the wealth!”
“Got a new honey? You gonna blow her away too?”
Brady turned his TV as loud as it would go—not very, as the volume gains on all the sets had been equipped with governors. But at least it kept him from hearing all the shouting.
Brady removed from the envelope a New Testament, which was brand-new and smelled of leather, a book about how to begin the Christian life, and a pamphlet called The Romans Road. Aha. He’d start there.
A brief introduction told Brady that this was a way of explaining salvation using verses from the book of Romans. He wondered why Chaplain Carey had not included the book of Romans with what he sent until the New Testament’s table of contents page told him that Romans was part of the Bible. According to the pamphlet, he had everything he needed to learn about salvation: why he needed it, how God provided it, how to receive it, and what it all meant.
As Brady quickly scanned the pamphlet and started looking up the verses in his New Testament, he realized the chaplain had already hinted at much of this. So this was where he got it.
Brady started by finding the first verse on the Romans Road, Romans 3:23—“For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.”
He didn’t have any quarrel with that. In fact, it was interesting to consider that he wasn’t the only wicked person. And he and other murderers weren’t the only ones either. Brady knew he should look up only the verses cited in the pamphlet so he could follow the flow and get the point, but he was curious. While he was in Romans 3, he kept reading:
“Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed His life, shedding His blood.”
To be made “right with God”—oh, if he could only believe this! Could it be true?
The booklet said that earlier in that same third chapter of Romans there was a description of how sin manifested itself. Brady was sure he had the gist of that, but since he was already there, he looked at verses 10 through 18 and realized that the chaplain had already quoted the first three verses to him about no one being good, not even one.
The passage continued: “Their talk is foul, like the stench from an open grave. Their tongues are filled with lies.”
He could sure identify with that.
“Snake venom drips from their lips.
“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.
“They rush to commit murder.
“Destruction and misery always follow them.
“They don’t know where to find peace.
“They have no fear of God at all.”
This was like reading Brady’s own biography.