Read Serial Killer's Soul for Free Online Page B

guy didn’t let my lack of interest stop him from talking to me.
    Levy tried to get me to open up by peppering me with questions. When I chose to answer him, which wasn’t often, I answered him bluntly. I didn’t feel like making friends; I wanted to be left alone. After hours of his seemingly aimless questions, he asked me if I had ever known “the goodness of the Lord.” I wanted to chuckle. If I was a God-fearing man, would I really be in the place I was in? I told him I hadn’t; religion was never part of my life.
    Levy was the first person I’d ever met who fit the description of “filled with the spirit of God.” He actually seemed to have the Lord in him, emerging from every pore in his body and every word he spoke. Levy told me about Jesus. Levy talked to me, taught me, and helped bring Jesus into my heart.
    My life was never the same from that moment forward.
    After Levy broke down my walls, I realized he was someone with whom I could relate. He was a black man, about my age, who had lived a hard life. He didn’t talk about his past; he just talked about how the love of Jesus had saved him. I saw Levy as a mentor and a teacher. He had the peace and wisdom of an old man and whenever he talked I couldn’t help but listen.
    Levy was happy
all
the time. He didn’t let anything bring him down. Itwas as if his whole being radiated … something. Levy loved life and he loved his Lord, and he couldn’t wait to share that happiness and peace with anyone who wanted to listen or was still enough to listen. I was drawn to everything Levy told me because I wanted the same happiness I saw in him. I wanted to learn how I could be happy and finally free from all the bad things in my life.
    One of the first things Levy told me was, “Prayer will change you.” I wondered how, at that point,
anything
could change me. I was preparing to spend ten years in prison and, to be honest, when I looked back on my life, I didn’t see much hope for a better future.
    Levy wouldn’t give up. He taught me everything he possibly could in those ten days. “Read the Bible,” he’d say, then he’d read it with me. Sometimes he wrote down specific verses and told me to read them later, when I had more time.
    Levy told me the Bible contained everything we needed to know in order to live a good life and be happy. He told me about Jesus Christ and how he died for my sins, even my armed robbery and drug abuse.
    I never found out why Levy was in prison but for some reason, I assumed he was in there for life. Inmates hardly ever talked about their crimes, mostly because they don’t want to think about them. No one in prison is guilty, you know? Prison is full of “innocent men,” to hear them talk. Many inmates are depressed about their sentences, especially those locked away for a long time. Dwelling on your crimes and your sentence just makes you miserable.
    Learning about faith from Levy helped keep my mind off bad things. He said if I just believed that the Son of God came down to this Earth and died on the cross for my sins, I, too, could gain eternal redemption. I didn’t know if I could believe him. I had done a lot of bad things. Granted, I may not have been as bad as some others; but regardless, if there is a God, was he at all interested in me?
    Levy reiterated that no matter how bad I’d been in the past, no matter what I’d done, God could and would forgive me. He said I could still earn a place in heaven for all eternity if I was truly sorry for the bad things I had done and believed in the goodness of God and his Son.
    I was skeptical.
    Levy didn’t give up. The fact that I kept listening and trying to learn reflected that I wasn’t giving up on myself for once either. Eventually everything Levy said started to make sense to me. Eternity sounded like a lot longer than the ten years of prison I was facing. I began to think that maybe I could serve my time in prison more productively. I started to dream dreams of getting