Nobody informed Isaiah, my one year-old, that it was Father’s Day. Or maybe he did know, in his own way, which is why he wanted to wrestle instead of sit quietly on my lap in church. I took him outside the sanctuary, where we could roll around on the floor without getting in trouble. After a while he grew bored with me, and preferred to crawl rapidly from one thing to another, restless and inquisitive as infants and men are.

After awhile he began making his way to the double doors separating us from the sanctuary, and I kept retrieving him, lest someone come barging through and thwack his little bald melon. After a few iterations of this he began to squawk at me when I pulled him away from the doors. He wanted to go inside. I’m a dense person by nature, and so it took me a while to realize this.

Seeing him strive to reach those doors brought to mind the 84th Psalm, which I memorized years ago, when I was in a dark place. I had memorized other scriptures out of obedience, or as a means of strengthening myself. I had even memorized one I intend to whisper, should I be conscious, on my deathbed (”Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty, for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine. Thine, O Lord, is the kingdom, and though art exalted above all”).

I memorized the 84th Psalm, however, in despair, certain that I was so far from God that my soul was forfeit. I would recite it as I walked the streets, pleading with God to let me live on his doorstep once my death came. “I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God/ Than dwell in the tents of wickedness,” goes the Psalm. From the doorstep I would be able to hear my children inside the kingdom of heaven, I told myself. It was far more than I deserved.

That dark time came to memory as I watched Isaiah slap at the door with a slobbery hand, seeking entry into a place that he doesn’t understand, and which — if we are being honest with ourselves — most of us understand little better. So I picked him up and opened the door, and he smiled his bucktoothed baby grin at me. I carried my child inside the sanctuary, because this is what fathers do. As I think back on my crooked walk with God, I recall that more than once he has done the same for me, and does it still, snatching me up from where I lie powerless, and bringing me in to that place which is home.

I would have settled for being a doorkeeper. But just as we could never abandon our children, our Father will not let us rest outside his house, not when we are yearning and broken. We haven’t the strength to open those doors, but he opens them for us, and if you have ever felt the sudden rush of his presence when you least expected it, you know exactly what I mean, and why it is impossible, in the end, to reason one’s way to heaven. So if you find yourself slapping at the sanctuary door, have hope even now, in the midst of whatever despair may grip you, that the one whose strength cannot fail will lift you up from where you lie, and carry you home.

How do I know? Because that’s what fathers do.

The Washington Post reported yesterday on a new federal study which reveals that more than 1 in 100 Americans are incarcerated, the highest percentage in U.S. history, and greater than that of countries like China. Faced with the rising costs of keeping more and more people in prison, states are considering experiments with alternative sentences for non-violent offenders.

My grandfather was a Gideon, and used to take Bibles to the local prison, where he visited with the inmates. I never went with him. I wondered why he did it, why he had such concern for them. The only people I knew about who’d gone to prison belonged there. They were grown-up versions of the bullies I had to face in grade school. I didn’t think about why they were there, any more than I thought about why bullies picked on little kids like me. I only knew that I wished more than once that our school had a prison, too.

I wonder if anyone in an official capacity, amidst all the criminological studies examining incarceration rates, and recidivism, and cost-effectiveness of alternative strategies, will ask why so many young men — for these are largely the population we are talking about — are committing crimes. Think about it: we live in one of the most prosperous nations on earth, such that even our poor have, except in the most extreme cases, a standard of living well above that of a substantial portion of the world’s population. We have enormous liberty, as well. What’s more, women are more sexually available now than at any other time in history. The present-day U.S. should be a young heathen’s nirvana.

But still there is this great ache, or some despair, or some deep need, that drives young men to steal, and attack, and rape, and murder. It drives them to poison their own bodies. What is it?

I hope you didn’t read this far for an answer, because I haven’t a definitive one. I do recall Charles Colson telling a story about providing prisoners in his ministry with cards and stamps before Mother’s Day, so that those who wanted to could send their mothers a small token of their affection. The response, he said, was overwhelming — so much so that when Father’s Day approached, he decided to make the same offer. That second time, however, there were few takers. These broken men — many of them ruthless criminals — jumped at the chance to send a token of love to their mothers. But they had nothing, most of them, to say to their fathers.

Do you think there’s a connection between that sad reality, and the rising prison population? And if so, what can be done? More specifically, because we can likely count on governments to avoid this hot potato the way presidential candidates avoid direct statements, what can churches do?