PRISON FELLOWSHIP BLOG

“She felt the love from Angel Tree as a child,” Danielle says, “and that’s what she wanted children with a parent in prison to feel.”

There are two basic ways of approaching our lives. One has to do with borders. When we are preoccupied with borders, we constantly ask ourselves, How close can I get to the edge? How fast can I drive and not get pulled over?

The following post originally appeared on the Justice Fellowship blog.

An August report released by the National Association of Evangelicals showed that 95% of evangelical leaders have been involved in regular ministry to prisoners. “It demonstrates the evangelical conviction that God offers redemption and reconciliation to all, regardless of what they have done,” said Leith Anderson, President of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE).

Thirteen-year-old Wyatt walked into an Arkansas church one December evening. His aunt had insisted that he go, but she wouldn’t tell him why.

He looked around the room and saw kids decorating cookies, making bracelets, creating Christmas ornaments, and taking goofy pictures in the photo booth.

While we slept last night, Congress found itself in a stalemate on the terms of the Affordable Healthcare Act, propelling the U.S. federal government into its first shutdown in 17 years.

These are difficult days to be a prison official.

As prison populations have exploded in the last decade, many departments of corrections have had to deal with budgetary cutbacks and fewer resources in their attempts to rehabilitate prisoners and to prepare them for release. 

My wife Cathy and I always tried to make sure that our home was a place where our kids and their friends could hang out. We had a system – as long as our garage door was open, our kids’ friends were free to come in.

High above the prison auditorium’s hardwood floors, fluorescent lights hum, turning back the early autumn dusk that has settled across the plains of eastern Oregon.

In the silence of the empty auditorium, Prison Fellowship volunteer leader Steve Kirkeby readies the overhead projector.

After living life behind prison walls, the first taste of freedom can be mighty sweet.

And so it was on that 20th day of September 2012 when Dana found herself climbing out of a prison van with such excitement that she let out a jubilant, “I’m free!”

Restoration is all about seeing God’s Kingdom come in the lives of our neighbors and in the culture, bringing them back to the whole, joyful state He originally intended. But that restoration must happen in us before it happens through us.

Kylie was devastated when her mom passed away from a serious illness just weeks before Christmas. The only family the little girl had left was her dad – but he would be in prison for many more years. Kylie never felt more alone, but the hopelessness in her heart fell away when Angel Tree gave her a Christmas she could cherish forever.

At an Angel Tree summer camp, I was walking down the beach with a boy named Jackson.*

Jackson, about 12 years old, was eager to engage me. He told me all about school and his likes and dislikes. When I asked him about camp, he responded, “Camp is awesome … but my foster home is not.

A reentry organization founded in Cleveland, Ohio, is working to eliminate misconceptions that employers have about the risks involved in hiring ex-prisoners.