The heavy metal door swung closed with a clang, and I was alone in the drunk tank.
(That’s what they call the solitary confinement room in my local jail.)
The block walls and cement floor are bare. A shiny chrome commode adorns one corner. It seems larger than it is because it is the only thing in the room.
I wonder how many people have bowed before it, clinging to it, emptying the contents of the previous night’s revelries into it.
“The customs of the peoples are [indeed] vanity,” as Jeremiah the prophet wrote.
“A tree from the forest is cut down and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman. They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move…”
The chrome commode cannot move. It cannot speak. It cannot see or hear.
Yet just last week I heard a man crying into it, confessing his sins, calling for help, pleading his cause.
“Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, for his images are false, and there is no breath in them. They are worthless, a work of delusion…”
As I look at the commode, I contemplate the idols of my own making. I have become a slave to them, locked into a room with them that I cannot escape. There they are, the only thing in the room, the only thing on which to call, yet they are unable to answer.
Idols are empty indeed.
The man in the tank had heard me passing by, and he had rushed to the door, kneeling to peer through the small slot in the door where they would pass his meals to him, reaching out as much of his hand as he could.
“Please!” he begged. “Please let me out!” He had determined that the chrome commode could not save.
I recognized those brown eyes and the hand, stretched out to me.
He had once been a clever, engaging little boy who stayed at my house, accompanied me to the grocery store, ate a happy meal in the back seat of my car on the way home.
Now, he doesn’t recognize me, and he is held captive.
I think of him as I sit alone in that same room. It makes me hate my own idols that have led me to these reflections. Like him, I want to rush to the slot in the door and call, “Save! Oh, save!”
A key turns in the lock, and the moment has passed.
A line of women is led in, and they sit along the block wall facing me. No one looks at the commode. They do not smile. Some are bruised. Some have dark circles under their eyes. Some are openly hostile. Others are glad for something to break up their monotony.
I open the Bible in my lap and read, “But the Lord is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King.”
Sarah Dixon Young 