Dave Brisbin 8.10.25
Central jail is a different world. Humorless guards, colorless surfaces, bolted down tables, stools. Time is wherever you are told to wait for as long as it turns out to be. I have plenty of time to take it all in. Unexpected energy, more family reunion than jail visit. Young women dressed up, made up, parents, grandparents, two girls next to me over the low, privacyless divider speaking fast and high, Spanish and English in same sentences. I spin on my stool to face the opposite wall of windows.

Young woman leaning into the glass speaking to a young man in his orange jumpsuit. The look in her eye, even from my angle, stops me. She could have been staring across white tablecloth and candlelight. Nothing else exists except the face in the glass. Like the prodigal son in an orange jumpsuit being hugged home, seems that Jesus, God, and the girl are all orange colorblind. No-fault love.

So what about justice? God is supposed to be just, right?

Well, we’re in a jail, so justice is grinding along, but Jesus understands that humans occupy two contexts at once. We live in macro groups, but our moment by moment encounters are micro, one on one. And though there is only one love, that love looks like justice in the macro and mercy and compassion in the micro. Because justice must rule in the macro—to lose fairness and equality is to lose the cohesion of the group. But justice becomes intolerance in the micro—mercy and compassion must define actual relationships.

Jesus and a girl at the jail are showing us how it works. Mercy within justice. Love shape-shifting through all of human experience. Though Jesus is always teaching from within a micro context, he respects the law and the macro justice it represents, but uses it as a guide, instruction—never an absolute instrument, never an excuse to miss the opportunity for mercy, for loving the person behind the glass. The young man will wear his orange jumpsuit however long justice requires, but if he keeps that look in his woman’s eyes, his soul will manage.

Isn’t that what we all need?
To see love and acceptance through the glass while still in our orange jumpsuits?