The glorious miracle of God’s grace is that it defies and overcomes our deeds. When Dana Moore gets into a car and drives hundreds of miles to meet a condemned man, he is an instrument of that grace. This is the church at its best, when a pastor lives out the parable of the lost sheep. He’s a shepherd who quite literally leaves his flock behind each day that he drives out to Livingston Texas, to meet the one behind bars, waiting to die.

But if Texas does not relent, and if the court does not intervene, we will see the state fail its foundational obligations. The issue is not whether Ramirez deserves the comfort he denied the victim of his own terrible crimes. But one of the cardinal beauties of our system of government rests in a single word from the Declaration of Independence—“unalienable.” The human rights safeguarded by our system of government aren’t “earned,” they simply “are.” They’re a manifestation of a human being’s inherent dignity.

Pastor Moore recognizes that dignity, and like countless pastors over the sweep of countless years, he simply wants a dying man to know–to feel–that he is not alone. And now it’s up to the state to fulfill its role, to recognize the centrality of faith to the human experience and protect its most simple expression at a most crucial moment.