I'm sure the future will be horrible but . . .

I know a woman whose 19-year-old son is in prison. Very bad situation; he is awaiting trial and could be put away for a long time.

Nevertheless, a few interesting things have developed. He quit smoking, for one, after a long and losing battle (the prison offered him their enforced abstinence program).

But it's so awful that he's in prison, and he has no doubt screwed up his life permanently.

He had never met a book he liked, and now he can't get enough. (I have made a few trips to Barnes & Noble for him myself; he favors Asian history, the Peloponnesian Wars, and the Pacific theater of WWII.).

But an ex-con has little chance of ever finding his place in society.

He has read Genesis, Exodus, Job, and all the New Testament up to and including Acts. (He told me he likes the book of Luke best of the Gospels because it says the criminal on the cross went to heaven.) And I noticed last time I saw him that he's lost his swagger.

But what if he gets slapped with a long sentence?

His relationship with his sister has always stunk, but now he writes to her and she writes to him. The family was coming apart by the centrifugal force of modern living, and now they have pulled together like white blood cells rushing to infection. And when they sit in the visiting room, they have to look at each other's faces for two hours (rather than at television), and real conversation happens.

But still, he's washed up for life.

Wouldn't it be an interesting experiment to just fix one's eyes on the good that God is doing TODAY in a situation, and not worry ahead of time about what might happen in the future?

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