A young man told me most recently that he was “woke.”

After reflection, I remembered being woke myself. In 1971, I was incarcerated, in solitary confinement, when I had an awakening. After many months in this place, which we referred to as a “mean camp,” I had a nudge from God. This left a clear impression on me about the Prodigal Son. I saw that in my Father’s house, there were even servants, hirelings, who were better off than I was, having my soul in prison as well as my body.  And I knew from my upbringing that the countless descendants of slaves, (who I’m numbered among) had breathed sanctity into me and had taught me right from wrong. And there I was, in the belly of the whale. 

Then it occurred to me (or perhaps I was informed by something from the Eternal) that if I would turn away from evil and do good, my soul would not forever be lost. It also occurred to me that everyone else in the prison, through God’s love for mankind, also had an awakening. God wouldn’t give that only to me. The problem was, that once they knew from this experience that they must turn away from evil and do good, many of them, having no foundation, didn’t know what “good” was. I believe that many of the rudderless people of today are indeed “woke,” but find themselves in the arena of life clueless as to how to begin to do right. This is a direct result of my shortcomings in ministering to them. Rather than not recognizing that they have been awakened to a certain degree, I should start providing a foundation for a true awakening to a life in Christ.