Last Wednesday I went with my friend Zach to meet with a retired judge. Zach has done his share of time and has been out and clean for four years. He is now our head roaster of our Underground Coffee project - tattooed men with dark pasts are now artisan coffee roasters...
In the process doing time, a person can accumulate a lot of court fines which in turn accumulate interest to the point where it is next to impossible to pay them off with the kinds of jobs ex-offenders get hired for, if at all. The coffee project is helping with that. One way is by giving guys like Zach a job and helping to pay their bills. Another way is to advocate for them in the court system. Thats what we were doing last week when we met with the judge to get advice about getting some of the fines dismissed so that Zach wouldn't live under such oppressive debt. At the end of the time we prayed together and the judge blessed Zach and Zach blessed the judge! When we were leaving the judge went to shake Zach's hand but Zach asked if he could give him a hug. When he did, Zach looked over at me with a big grin and said, "I've never hugged a judge before!"
Then Zach invited me to lunch with his wife and then asked the judge if he'd like to come - and he did. What a beautiful picture of the Kingdom - the lion and the lamb, the convict and the judge, eating lunch together and blessing each other!
No comments:
Post a Comment