PRISON FELLOWSHIP: forgiveness

Twelve years ago, Patty O’Reilly’s husband was killed by an intoxicated driver. Now over a decade later, she has made it through a journey from anger and hatred to forgiveness and a new found love of life. She reflects on her experience with Reader’s Digest.

Every year, we look forward to receiving letters from those who were touched by Angel Tree during the most recent Christmas season. Particularly, we love hearing from prisoner parents who express how Angel Tree helped strengthen or rebuild a relationship with their children.

At Prison Fellowship, we often talk about the significance of forgiveness and reconciliation—between prisoners and members of their families, between offenders and their victims. Recently, Liz Stanosheck, a member of our field staff, shared a pretty amazing story about a situation in which she was the victim.

He’s one of the most notorious men in recent history.  When Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon outside the Dakota apartment building on a cold December evening in Manhattan in 1980, his name was added to a list of infamy:  Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, Sihran Sihran, John Hinckley.

On paper, my nephew should never have become addicted to drugs. He was a bright young man raised in a wonderful home by godly parents. And yet, he traded it all in for his substance abuse, leaving his heartbroken family behind when he went to prison.

Ron and Phil sat side-by-side on a platform, sharing about the decades that their life stories have intertwined. The journey began when Ron, then a drug addict desperately seeking cash, shot and killed Phil’s father.

After Ron pulled the trigger, he went to prison.

In 1993, a teenager named Oshea Israel shot and killed 20-year-old Laramiun Byrd at a party both were attending in Minneapolis.  Israel was sentenced to 25 years behind bars for second-degree murder, while the mother of the victim was sentenced to life without her only child.

Archeologists working in Jerusalem think they might have excavated the site of Jesus’ trial (Mark 15). Fifteen years ago, a team began digging through the layers of an abandoned building near the Tower of David. They believe they have uncovered the foundations of Herod’s Palace, a probable site for Jesus’ famous audience with Pontius Pilate.

Rocio remembers it like it was yesterday. “One day there was a knock on our door,” she says. When she answered, a volunteer from a local church told her that he had been sent on behalf of her husband and Angel Tree. “He told me he had gifts for our kids from their daddy,” Rocio recalls.

The following post originally appeared as a BreakPoint radio commentary.

If I asked you what prison and salvation have in common, chances are you would draw a blank. I know I would.

But the answer, according to philosopher and theologian Stephen H.

On Aug. 16, nearly 30 boys and girls gathered around the entrance of the medium-security Avery Mitchell Correctional Facility in the beautiful mountains of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, to spend a day with someone they'd been missing lately: their incarcerated fathers.