Taken from In the Presence of Mine Enemies by Howard and Phyllis Rutledge [Fleming Revell, 1973, p.34]. Howard was a United States Air Force pilot who was shot down in the Vietnam war and spent several years in prison there.
During those longer periods of enforced relfection it became so much easier to separate the important from the trivial, the worthwhile from the waste. For example, in the past, I usually worked or played hard on Sundays and had no time for church. For years Phyllis (his wife) had encouraged me to join the family at church. She never nagged or scolded – she just kept hoping. But I was too busy, too preoccupied, to spend one or two short hours a week thinking about the really important things.
Now the sights and sounds and smells of death were all around me. My hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for a steak. Now I wanted to know about that part of me that will never die. Now I wanted to talk about God and Christ and church. But in Heartbreak (the name POWs gave their prison camp) solitary confinement, there was no pastor, no Sunday-School teacher, no Bible, no hymnbook, no community of believers to guide and sustain me. I had completely neglected the spiritual dimension of my life. It took prison to show me how empty life is without God (italics mine).