NY Jets quarterback Tim Tebow, through talk and prayer, is helping turn ... - New York Daily News

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Tim Tebow, former Florida Gators star and current Jets QB, prays with inmates at Lawtey Correctional Institution.

LAWTEY, Fla. - Willie James Ashley is a 55-year-old former Air Force man from Miami who had a long career in the cocaine business and once caught a pass from Tim Tebow. He caught a couple of them, actually. The first one Ashley brought down in a crowd, with his thick body and his buzz cut, and his blue, prison-issue uniform, Tebow throwing a Hail Mary to the back row of the bleachers in a crowded gymnasium.

The next one came on the gym floor, where Tebow missed him on a timing pattern, then threw one more, a flare pass, which Ashley caught easily. That was almost three years ago, but Willie Ashley hasn’t forgotten the pass, or the man who delivered it, in front of 300 inmates in a hot gym at Lawtey Correctional Institution.

“I was at the lowest point of my life,” Willie Ashley says. “I took my whole family down, and I was suffering.”

He talks about feeling worthless and ashamed and angry, how regret and pessimism were pounding him like a mallet. If it didn’t all start to change the moment he met Tim Tebow, Heisman Trophy winner and national champion and then a Florida Gator icon, it was pretty close.

“He inspired me with his message and he inspired me with his walk with God,” Ashley says. “He helped me see that the Lord would give me another chance, and understand that the Lord takes nothing and makes something out of it all the time. Whatever trash people may think you are, God says, ‘I can make you a treasure.’”

Willie Ashley will be in the Lawtey Correctional Institution chapel Sunday, and like Christians everywhere on this Easter Sunday, will be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As he goes about trying to rebuild and restore his own life, Ashley says he thanks God for bringing him to this place, a medium-security facility with 800 inmates on the outskirts of a small, impoverished community in northeast Florida. He thanks God for bringing him before Tebow, too, a sentiment shared by Reginald Spivey, Gerald Evans and Tyron Thomas â€" three other inmates who have heard Tebow’s impassioned Christian testimony in two visits here, and talk about a Tebowmania that is altogether different from the one that has engulfed the big city the last few weeks. It is not about green No. 15 jerseys flying off the racks, or overflow press conferences, or even about who should play quarterback for the New York Jets.

It’s about a man who, by all accounts, not only lives his faith, but shares it with fire and fervor you need to hear to believe. Whatever one’s religious beliefs, or lack of same, it is impossible not to view Tim Tebow as an authentic man who wants to share what he considers the greatest gift of his life: the love and mercy of a gracious God.