I have a friend in a faraway place,
Never heard his voice, never seen his face.
Never breathed his scent, never shook his hand,
Cause there’s a wall that keeps me from this man.
Steel and concrete built by sin,
It keeps me out, while it keeps him in.
A physical contact we’ve not made yet,
And in the flesh we have not met.
But I seem to know him as a brother,
Though his and mine were not same mother.
What then brings two friends together?
Who haven’t spoke in like forever?
Words of joy, words of woe,
Words alone are how we know.
The inner soul, the mind, the heart,
Yes words reveal our deepest part.
With ink and paper, we breech the wall,
He reads my thoughts, I hear his call.
The ties that bind are paper thin,
And brought forth with a lowly pen.
But stronger than both sin and death,
The bond remains past our last breath.
So pen is mightier than the sword,
And by written word, we find our Lord.
Though we don’t see Him face to face,
His words we savour, His words we taste.
They break down walls we build of sin,
And reveals His Love more than a friend.
His Spirit enters our clean abode,
Washed in His blood, for Love’s our code.
For words transcend both space and time,
And a stronger bond you will not find.
So my friend and Jesus I long to embrace,
But flesh cannot take the Spirit’s place.
Tertius
Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.
John 3:6
A note about “Pen Pal”: Upon looking in my mail box and finding a letter from an inmate I’d been swapping mail with for quite some time, but had never met, I found what he had written touched my soul in a special way and wrote this in the next couple of hours. Although he had no job in prison and no family or friends on the outside he got stamps by selling his food trays. I received more letters from him than my other five prison pen-pals who all had either jobs or people on the outside (or both) put together. I probably know this man better than some people I see every day. Whenever I see Jesus I hope to give His ankles a good squeeze, but I’m not sure that will make any difference in how much I love Him. Having a better understanding of who He is? I’m sure! But pure physical contact? I don’t know?