“Today, like every day, all we have to do is accept the absolute, unconditional, perfect love of God—accept it and let ourselves be changed by it. As for Ike, remember Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son—welcomed home even after he rejected his dad, ran away to a foreign land, wasted all his money on parties and prostitutes. No matter what we do, we are wanted, we are welcome to come home.

“This past Tuesday, Ike closed his eyes in this world and opened them in the next. I trust he opened them to the familiar and loving eyes of a father, who welcomed him home. Johnathan Edwards, the famous Puritan preacher, was wrong. We’re not sinners in the hands of an angry God. We’re sinners in the hands of a merciful and loving God.”

After the funeral, the family thanked me and tried to pay me but I wouldn’t take it.

As Laura and I were preparing to leave, the young man said to be a friend of Ike’s asked if he could talk to me.

“I loved Ike,” he said, looking down at the floor. “I even went to see him a couple of times in prison. But then something happened to him. Drugs, I think, but something else too. He got in over his head. I think they killed him. I wanted you to know.”

“Who do you think killed him?” I asked.

“Whoever he was involved with,” he said.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Don Hall.”

“Is there a number I can reach you at if I find something out or need to ask you more questions?”

He shook his head and walked away. After taking about five steps, he stopped, nearly turned around, but then continued walking.

“Do you believe all that?” Laura asked when we were back in the car.

“Believe all what?” I asked.

“All those things you said in your message, which was excellent and perfectly appropriate, by the way.”

“Thank you. Yes, I do.”

“How can you believe such things when the world is the way it is?”

“How can I not?”

“You spoke about mercy and grace, but where is it really? Where do you see any evidence of it? I really want to know.”

“Dancing with you last night. That was a grace. And your peach perfume. A good book. Sunset. Sunrise. A rainy night. The love of a parent. The loyalty of a friend. Grace surrounds us.”

“But you can’t know all of this, all those things have meaning?”

“I get that it’s all wishful thinking, hope and faith, but . . . they have meaning to me.”

24

Under cover of a small oak grove, I parked on an old twin-path logging road in Dad’s Explorer.

I had taken Laura home after our day in Tallahassee, and was parked in a location that gave me a good view of the prison without being observed by Tower One.