Over the course of the Hillsong Africa Worship Tour we had the privilege of visiting five different prisons. Whenever we finished our visit to a prison, this was inevitably the last question we would be asked. This is not significant in itself— prisoners often ask for gifts and favours, and it wasa beautiful guitar. What made the question striking was everything the prisoners were not asking. 
Many of the prisons we visited did not provide beds or uniforms for their inmates. Some did not even have safe access to water. One facility was built in 1897, and it did not look like much had changed since then. I will always remember the menu taped to the main gate of one prison. If your family was willing to pay, you could get some actual food added to the small dish of maize-meal. Malnutrition and disease are commonplace, and downright starvation was a continuous lurking possibility. Why ask for a guitar?
(Afternoon Worship Festival in Livingstone, Zambia)
The inmates are intelligent enough to realize they would have more chance of getting some food or money from their visitors than their only musical instrument, but they didn’t care. In a bizarre way they were responding to a hunger that transcended even the most basic human needs. These prisoners did not have food, shelter or even physical safety, and yet all they asked for was music. As one old prisoner said to me, “music is the language of the soul.” Maybe they were so tired of scraping together an existence like animals, that they were desperate for a reminder that there was something more to life than mere survival.
If a prisoner is willing to overlook even basic necessities to nourish his soul, maybe I need to be assessing whether all the luxuries and entertainment in my life are worth the distraction...
(The crowd in Livingstone -- several thousand strong)
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