"Barbara’s kind eyes stared at  me from the religion section of our newspaper.  An article titled Pen Pal said, “Prisoners find a prolific friend behind Box 401.”  Marveling at how she shared the gospel with dozens of inmates, I sent her a roll of stamps to help out.  Barbara sent me a thank-you note, adding that many inmates wanted someone to write to.  Was I interested?
       I wasn’t sure.  Although I had many pen pals myself, this would be different: The people with whom I corresponded were Christians.  This would be a criminal.  Finally, however, I agreed to write to someone in prison, thinking to offer a spark of hope to someone in a dark world.  Barbara sent me Larry Lonchar’s address.  At first I had no idea why Larry was on death row and did not ask.  I told him about my family and asked about his.  But Larry’s first letter caught me off guard.
       “My case is unique from most convicted murderers.  I was a good student, in Little League, and a newspaper boy,” he wrote.  He had enclosed photos of himself as a boy; playing catch, holding a fishing pole.  “I never used drugs or drank.  Yet here I sit on death row asking the state to kill me.”  The rest of the letter bitterly declared his depression and his wish to die.
       “I’ve thought about what you said,” I wrote back, “and wonder where you are, spiritually.  Do you have a religion?  Were you raised in any church?”
       Larry told me he didn’t believe there was a God, yet he prayed just in case there was.  “I wish in my heart I could believe there is a God because then I could have peace instead of wanting to die.  I envy your faith.  But I will be in hell.”
       The letters traveled back and forth, eventually following a certain pattern.  Larry would expound on his depression, I would offer hope, then we would talk about the weather, the news, his mom, movies, and dogs (he loved them).  Sometimes I sent cartoons with dogs in them.
       One sunny morning, I opened the familiar envelope from Inmate EF209811, and an old newspaper article fell out.  “Larry Lonchar was convicted for the slayings of two men and one woman,” it announced. “The murders were prompted by a $10,000 gambling debt Lonchar owed them.”  Shocked at his crime--he was a triple murderer--I was also puzzled.  Was the newspaper clipping a test to see if I would continue writing when I knew how bad he really was?
       Sitting at the kitchen table, I carefully read the accompanying letter.  “The victims’ family hates me,” Larry said.  “But not more than I hate myself.  I cannot live with the knowledge of what I did.  That’s why I want to be executed.”
       Although I felt immense sorrow for the victims’ family, I also felt something I couldn’t categorize: a compassion for someone who tormented himself for causing others irreversible grief.  I had to tell him he could have peace, by confessing his awful acts to God and asking for forgiveness.  I began including Bible verses in my letters.  I felt good, reaching to a lost sinner with the gospel message.  Then the sands upon which I righteously stood washed out from under me.
       The slide began when Larry’s story was profiled on television.  The topic was Larry’s desire, as a death row inmate, to become an organ donor.  As I watched the program, I felt the impact of the horrible day that put him in prison.  I learned how the murders were done, saw the crime scene, and saw the tears of a young man who had lost a dad, a brother, and a woman friend—three lives cut short by one selfish man.
       Suddenly I didn’t like Larry anymore.  He feels guilty?  I thought.  Well he should! He deserves to die.  When I told Larry I’d watched the program, I didn’t tell him about my reaction.  He wrote back, “Now I know you are a true Christian because you know what happened and are still writing to me.”  He didn’t know about my daily conflict.  While I believed that Christ died for us all, never before had I come so face-to-face with what it all meant.
       My mind kept replaying the videotape with the 911 recording of a doomed woman crying for help.  Then I considered other cries for help: From Hitler’s victims-- from children being molested...Yet the evil people committing such crimes could one day be with Jesus in heaven.  That’s what I was telling Larry.  I shook my head.  If this is what I am telling him, I’d better believe it with my whole heart, not just my mind.
       I went back to my Bible.  Leafing through the gospel of John, I stopped at an underlined

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verse: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (14:6).  I remembered when these words first had meaning to me.  Although reared in a godless home, I believed that God did exist, and had for years followed many paths looking for Him.  But when I visited a friend’s church and the speaker quoted Jesus’ words “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me,” it struck a chord of truth.  This was the way to God!  Yet I was acutely aware of my wayward lifestyle.  How could I even approach this One who could lead me to God?
       Soon after, I learned that Jesus had not died on a cross for good people.  There was “no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10) and “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), but all who believed on Jesus were justified by His sacrifice and atonement (Romans 3:25).
       I recalled my tears of relief when I understood that He really had died for me, and remembered how, when I discovered I could be a new person in Christ (2 Cor.5:17), I had gratefully received that new life.  Thinking about Larry, my throat tightened as tears welled.  Had I, over the years, become so accustomed to the Scriptures that I had forgotten something?  Had the years convinced me that trying to live a good life, or doing good deeds, had made me worthy of Christ’s sacrifice?
       I once heard grace defined as God giving us what we did not deserve, and mercy as God withholding what we did deserve.  Mulling over that thought along with the Scriptures, I saw anew what it meant that Jesus died for all who believed on Him.  Larry and I both were sinners, in need of God’s mercy.  If Jesus didn’t die for Larry, He didn’t die for me--or for anyone else.
       My next letter carried a fervent assurance I had not felt before.  “Jesus said, ‘it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick’ (Matt. 9:12) I explained, “and that He did not call the righteous, but sinners (Mark 2:17). Like you, Larry.  And like me.”
       Instead of ignoring my comments, Larry began to ask questions about God.  Letter by letter, I answered his questions, from pointing him to evidence that God was real, to reading Christian books from the prison library, to studying the Bible.
       “I've read about Moses and David,” Larry wrote.  “God forgave them the murders they were responsible for.  Yet it’s hard to believe God can love and forgive me.  Please continue to pray.”
       Sometimes I reasoned with him, “Do you think God is saying, ‘Salvation is open to everyone but Larry’?”  Once, I copied out verses from Psalm 107 for him: “Some sat in darkness and the deepest gloom, prisoners suffering in iron chains, for they had rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High...They stumbled and there was no one to help.  Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress...brought them out of darkness...and broke away their chains.”
       I told him it was unlikely that God would set him free from prison, but would free him from chains that were worse: the chains in his heart.  One day I jumped with glee when he wrote back, “I am much closer to God, now.”
       Our correspondence continued for the last six years of Larry’s life.  A few months before he died, Larry told me, “I now know what Christianity means.”  As the months dwindled to weeks, I found boldness in how to encourage Larry.  “God says He will never leave us, nor forsake us (Heb. 13:5).  Hold his hand, Larry, and He’ll walk through this with you all the way.”
       In his last letter, Larry wrote, “My dad is an agnostic.  I’m going to try to convert him by giving him the evidence that convinced me that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”  At the end of that letter he said, “I’m not afraid of dying, because I know I’m going to a better place, heaven.  Thank you for being my friend and for caring...until we meet in heaven, take care!”
       I cried because I had lost a friend.  Yet not really, for although we never met in person, I believe we really will meet in heaven.  Recently, when I received an opportunity to write to a woman in prison for life, I didn’t hesitate.  Right now she’s in a type of denial regarding her crimes.  But one day, I pray, I will be able to tell her how not the healthy, but the sick need a doctor, and about the God who was so merciful to send that doctor to me.

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