Ed extended his hand to thank me for all Prison Fellowship had done for him.
He had been in prison for over 20 years and was incarcerated in a state far from his family. He saw his mom once a year when she flew to visit him. He saw other members of his family infrequently and lost touch with all his friends. When he finally returned home, those who did know him didn’t want to associate with him. He was re-entering his community well beyond the age of 40 with his mom as his only support system.
Acting boldly, Ed’s mom’s pastor hired him as a caretaker of her church. There he found meaning and community. Ed worked at the church for almost three years until the pastor resigned. Once the pastor left other church leaders – those without an understanding of the difficulty of re-entering a community after incarceration – quickly moved to dismiss Ed from the church staff.
Ed was blindsided. He had been open and honest about what he had done, and never hid the price he had paid as a result. The church leadership was not swayed. Not only was he fired from his position, Ed was asked to leave the church – the community he had embraced and he thought had embraced him nearly three years earlier. Bitterness and anger began to build.
It was at this point the Spirit of Jesus started to rise up in his heart and mind. Ed began following Jesus while in prison – learning about Jesus love and grace in a PF event. He was then discipled – learning the Truth in the Bible and how to live a life in obedience to God’s guidelines. Ed embraced a life following Jesus and rejected the selfishness that steals and destroys.
Ed graciously told church leaders that he would gladly leave if doing so would avoid injuring the body of Christ. However, this was not about him.
“For over 20 years my mother has sat alone in church,” Ed told the church leaders, “and for over 20 years she has had to travel to see her son once a year. I vowed that after I was done with my sentence she would never sit in church alone, and that I would be by her side every Sunday. I will leave this church if you force me but I am asking that for my mother’s sake you don’t – allow her to have her son next to her every week in Church. She deserves that.”
They leadership, moved by his commitment to his mother, relented and allowed Ed to remain as a member of the church.
Ed did not let the loss of his job at the church set him back. He started his own company and has “worked every day since then.” He now employs two other men. He is also a Prison Fellowship volunteer and is leading other men down the path he traveled well. He even volunteers at the same church that once wanted him to leave. And every Sunday morning, he sits next to his mother during worship services.
I was talking to a miracle. Ed went to prison and selfish and angry man who did not care about family and community. A relationship with Jesus – proposed to him by a PF volunteer – transformed his soul, his heart, his mind, his body, his family, his church, and his mom’s world. How cool is that?