Remember Those in Prison
The year was 1990. Bishop Enocent Silwamba was a new Prison Fellowship Zambia staff member. He was eager to make a difference, and his mission was clear: engage the Zambian church to help “transform criminal offenders, reconcile broken relationships, and restore wounded communities.”
It was more than a decade ago, but Melissa still vividly remembers the day she was held at gunpoint.
“It was a Tuesday, which is generally a quiet day,” she says. Melissa was bent over her desk at a bank on the north side of Brisbane, Australia, when she heard someone approach her.
Prison Fellowship International, Prison Fellowship’s ministry counterpart, is the largest, most extensive association of national Christian ministries working within the criminal justice field. To learn more about PFI, visit www.pfi.org.
Ibrahim wears deep lines on his forehead, and bears a scar across his left cheek.
Rosita wasn’t your typical kindergartner. She had no dolls to cherish. No friends to play with. Her childhood dreams were more like nightmares. At 5 years old, she had never experienced even a single moment of freedom.
There is a clear relationship between brain function and certain kinds of behavior. For several years I conducted brain mapping research on rats as a researcher in the Psychology Department of a Canadian university. It was extremely interesting work that eventually resulted in discovering unique linkages between specific areas of the brain and behaviors.
Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still. Shrieking voices Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering, Always assail them
T. S. Eliot, “Four Quartets, Burnt Norton”
Have you ever listened to someone talk on and on until they think of something to say?
The congregation knelt in silence for the prayer of confession . . .
“Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy holy laws, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.
It sounds strange, somewhat on the line between irony and absurdity, to think that people would rather label and judge something as significant as each other but completely bypass a peanut. … World peace is only a dream because people won’t allow themselves and others around them to simply be peanuts.
Hunger…it may not and cannot be experienced vicariously. He who never felt hunger can never know its real effects, both tangible and intangible. Hunger defies imagination; it even defies memory. Hunger is felt only in the present.
– Elie Wiesel
“HUNGRY – Will work for food!”
So the people of the valley sent a message up the hill, asking for the buried treasure, tons of gold for which they’d kill. Came an answer from the kingdom “with our brothers we will share all the secrets of our mountain, all the riches buried there.”