If I didn’t have this scar, I would never have gone back to jail.

It could be a hopeless and lonely place. That probably scared me the most–not so much for myself, but for the guy I was there to visit.

I hadn’t been to a jail or prison since that fifth grade field trip to the state prison when that inmate pretended to escape, jumped on our bus, and then gave a motivational speech to his "captive audience". I liked the fourth grade planetarium trip better.

As I walked through layer after layer of security, I couldn’t help but think of that day some 20 years before. The prison chaplain was excited about my visit.

“So, Joe used to be in your youth ministry?” he asked. “Yeah. I baptized him three years ago when he was 14. Funny thing, I got this scar on the same day. Tough to forget that kid,” I replied. That scar had reminded me of him almost every day since his arrest about two months earlier.

I had tripped while changing to go out to the baptism, cutting my head when it hit the wall. I went through the baptism with a napkin and a visor covering it. Twenty years as a Christian, the Church had always reminded me of purity, destiny and helping the next generation. Relevant voices had reminded me to help the poor and flee greed. But it took this silly scar on my skull to jar my mind to remember those in prison.

It shouldn’t have taken that. So many voices have called out for thousands of years: Joseph in Genesis, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, pretty much every disciple, Paul and the guy who wrote Hebrews.

Sandwiched among his calls for love, forgiveness and purity, came this reminder: “Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering” (Hebrews 13:3 TNIV).

Twenty years as a Christian, and I’d forgotten these people. It was almost too easy, because in some way, they were supposed to be the enemy. Every nightly newscast, every day on the radio and every newspaper almost begged me to join the moral majority who lamented each crime and arrest as a sign of the downward spiral of our nation.

“Shouldn’t have taken prayer out of school.”

“That’s what we get for teaching evolution.”

“Our streets are a little safer today.”

Anyone else have anything to say?

“I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”

What are you talking about Jesus?

“I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

Walking past a hall of cells, I was surrounded by guilty people, but I was feeling pretty guilty myself. Talking to the old chaplain was tough. He’d given decades helping these guys, and now, he was giving me advice about my visit with Joe.

“I’m getting up in age. We need more young guys like you in here. It gives these fellas hope. Hope that they can make it when they get out. Now, when they ask, I give them this Bible. That’s the beginning. The next step is up to them and the Lord,” he told me.

I looked at the stack of Bibles. The front cover said, “Free on the Inside.”

It was time to see Joe. He was escorted into the chaplain’s visitation room. With no protective window, I’d be the first person who’d visited Joe that he could hug. When the door opened, I thought of the 14-year-old kid I’d baptized just three years earlier. He walked in–35 pounds thinner, coming off a cocaine addiction, very pale–and his eyes lit up. He’d had no idea I was coming. It was a good hug, and I couldn’t help but realize: by coming to see him, I could tell that, in his heart, Joe was coming back to us.

The United States has the largest number of documented prisoners in the world, some 2.2 million people, or about 1 in 150 US residents. Of that 150, it’s so easy for the 149 to go about our way, forgetting. Statistics say that of the 150, about 119 are professing Christians. Maybe the writer of Hebrews knew something about life behind bars. He simply said “Remember them.”