Pamela’s regular journeys to the prison deserve more attention than I gave them at the time, preoccupied as I was with my own suffering. Consider what she faced each week. She rose early, dressed carefully—not for vanity, but because a wife visiting her husband in prison owes him the dignity of appearing as though the outside world has not collapsed. She took the bus for two hours each way, or paid for an Uber she could barely afford. She stood in line with flaite women whose lives bore no resemblance to hers. She submitted to a physical search that no woman should have to endure merely to see her husband. She carried bags of food, sorted them according to the arbitrary and shifting rules about what was permitted, argued with guards about Caesar salad dressing, and sometimes had items confiscated for no reason anyone could explain. She delivered cash in envelopes, supplies in sacks, and medications through the service window. And then, if she was lucky, she sat across from me at a plastic table for two hours—less however many minutes the system stole that day—before making the long journey home.

She did this not once, not a few times, not when she felt moved by the Spirit, but weekly, for as long as she was permitted. When visitation was halted during the pandemic, she still came to drop off encomienda. When the rules changed, she adapted. When the guards were hostile, she was patient. When the bus ride was long, the weather was foul, the line was endless, and the search was humiliating, she came anyway. This is what faithfulness looks like when it is not a sermon illustration but a four-hour bus ride in the rain.

The church must learn from Pamela and from every faithful prison visitor like her, and Valentín, plus Jana, María, Obed, and others. Visitation is not a program to be staffed. It is a discipline to be practiced. It requires the same kind of dogged, unglamorous persistence that characterizes all serious Christian obedience. The visitor who comes once and never returns has done less good than he imagines. The visitor who comes every week and sits through the noise, the plastic tables, the masks, the cameras, and the arbitrary rules—that visitor is the one who makes the prisoner believe that he has not been erased from the human community.

Glorifying God in the Day of Visitation

I return, in closing, to Peter’s language about the day of visitation. The passage is addressed to Christians living as strangers and sojourners in a hostile world—which is precisely what a Christian prisoner is. Peter’s counsel is that their “conversation” (manner of life) should be “honest” (honorable, beautiful) among the Gentiles, so that even those who slander them as evildoers may, by observing their good works, “glorify God in the day of visitation.”

The application to prison life is luminous. The prisoner who maintains his integrity under pressure—who reads his Bible, shares his food, treats other men with dignity, refuses to join the moral rot of prison culture, and endures the daily grind without bitterness—is conducting himself “honestly among the Gentiles.” The machucados who watch him are the Gentiles in view. And when God visits—whether through the conversion of a fellow inmate, the opening of a conversation about the Gospel, or the simple recognition by an unbeliever that this man is different—that is perhaps the day of visitation in its fullest theological sense.

But the phrase also carries its prison meaning. Visitation day—the day when Pamela came, when the plastic tables were set up, when the masks were put on and then taken off, when the tape marks on the floor were ignored in favor of human touch—was itself a day when God visited me through the embodied love of a faithful wife and the kindness of friends who refused to forget. Every Saturday that Pamela walked through those gates, God was visiting me. Every sack of food that Valentín brought, God was visiting me. Every letter, every phone call from Bob, every prayer offered by a friend or fellow Baptist pastor, like Obed or Edwin, who remembered my chains—these were visitations of divine mercy mediated through human faithfulness.

The church that grasps this truth will never again treat prison visitation as an optional extra, a niche ministry for the unusually compassionate. It will understand that to visit the prisoner is to participate in God’s own visitation of His suffering people. And it will understand that the failure to visit—the empty chair, the unanswered letter, the Saturday that passes without a face appearing at the gate—is a failure to be present where God has called His people to be present.

“I was in prison, and ye came unto me” (Matthew 25:36). Those words are not a suggestion. They are a test—of love, of obedience, and of whether the church truly believes what it professes to believe about the body of Christ and the bonds that hold it together.

Action Steps

Organize regular, sustained prison visitation through the local church, not as a special event but as a weekly or biweekly discipline. Assign specific members to specific prisoners. Maintain a rotation so that no prisoner goes more than two weeks without seeing a face from the congregation. Treat the visitation schedule with the same seriousness as the preaching schedule.

Support the prisoner’s spouse and family with practical help for visitation. This includes transportation costs, childcare during visits, assistance with navigating the prison’s rules and paperwork, and emotional support during the humiliating search process. If a wife cannot afford the bus fare to visit her husband, the church has a duty to provide it. If she needs someone to accompany her through the line, provide that too.

Advocate for humane visitation policies. Churches and Christian organizations should press prison administrators for reasonable visiting hours, dignified search procedures, adequate visiting space, and policies that protect rather than erode family bonds. Where policies are cruel or arbitrary—such as prohibiting basic food items for no discernible reason—challenge them through proper channels.

Prepare prisoners and visitors for the emotional intensity of visitation. Pastors and counselors should help both parties understand that the joy of reunion will be mixed with grief, that two hours is never enough, and that the return to the cell or the bus ride home will be harder than the visit itself. Provide pastoral follow-up after visits, not just before them.

Teach the congregation the theology of visitation. Preach on Matthew 25:31-46, Hebrews 13:3, and 1 Peter 2:12. Help church members understand that visiting a prisoner is not an act of unusual heroism but of ordinary Christian obedience—and that the failure to visit is a failure the church must repent of, not merely regret.

Discussion Questions

Peter’s phrase “the day of visitation” carries both a theological meaning (God’s gracious coming) and a prison meaning (the weekly visiting day). How do these two meanings illuminate each other? What does it mean to “glorify God” through the ordinary act of showing up at a prison on Saturday?

Pamela’s weekly ordeal—the long bus ride, the humiliating search, the arbitrary rules, the limited time—represents a significant sacrifice of dignity, money, and emotional energy. How should churches support the spouses and families of prisoners who bear these costs? What specific forms of help would be most meaningful?

The chapter describes how the no-touching rule was widely broken because the need for human physical contact after months of separation was overwhelming. What does this tell us about the relationship between physical presence and spiritual ministry? How should Christians think about institutional rules that contradict basic human needs? Is it wrong to defy public policy and show affection to one’s spouse?

The concept of the sano—the mentally “healthy” or innocent man who stands out in prison by his conduct, his visitors, and his character—suggests that faithful Christian living is itself a form of witness in a degraded environment. How can churches cultivate this kind of “visible holiness” among their members who are incarcerated, and how can visitation reinforce it?