PRISON FELLOWSHIP: incarceration

With Christmas just a few weeks away, thousands of Angel Tree children are still unassigned. This means that boys and girls in your own community may not get to unwrap a gift from their mom or dad in prison and hear the Good News of our Savior. Will you help share the joy of God's greatest gift to us this season?

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.

Carey’s call to Christians asks us all to step outside our individual opinions on gun laws and gun rights to take a look at how we can reach out to people whose lives have been impacted by gun violence.

When Christmas comes this year, Michelle and her family will again be part of Angel Tree. But this year, they’ll be giving the gifts instead of receiving them.

Chicago lawmakers have decided it's time to take a fresh approach to counteracting all the gun violence and overflowing jails in their city. And this fresh approach starts with the young people.

Humor is a very powerful thing.  It has the ability to entertain.  It can connect people who otherwise might have very little in common and allow old friends to revisit happy times and places.  A well-timed joke can relieve tension, foster conversation, encourage, bring cheer, and alleviate melancholy.

Last week, Ken Cuccinelli, former attorney general of Virginia, and Deborah Daniels, former assistant U.S. attorney general for the Office of Justice Programs, co-published an article on WashingtonPost.com called "Less Incarceration Could Lead to Less Crime."

This week, “America ReFramed” aired its feature-length documentary on the lives of incarcerated moms: “Mothers of Bedford.”

“America ReFramed” is a television series bringing its viewers a “snapshot of the transforming American life.”  Within the last few decades the number of incarcerated women in America has more than doubled, and today, 80 percent of female inmates are biological mothers to school-aged children.

This coming Sunday we’ll celebrate all the moms in our lives – mothers, grandmothers, and special women who have loved us well and helped us become the people we are today.

Lately I’ve been thinking about moms in a unique circumstance – the ones behind bars.

Children of prisoners mourn the loss of their incarcerated parent. Some mourn the loss of the parent who was previously available to care for them. Others mourn the loss of the parent who “could have been,” if only the parent hadn’t made that mistake or hadn’t gotten caught.

From March 5 until April 20, Kent McKeever of Waco, Texas, wore orange prison clothes each day. He wore them to the grocery store, to the movies, to run a race, and even to jury duty.

McKeever, a youth pastor and lawyer, explains why he donned prison garb throughout Lent: “Even though it wasn’t real and I could explain myself and take it off at anytime, wearing the orange prison uniform gave me an opportunity to listen to the songs of the oppressed in ways I could never hear and experience as a white male with a middle-class, professional background.”

Raul would find himself in a situation he couldn’t run from, and he would learn that God was his only source of true freedom from his crime, his guilt, and his anger.

"I delivered my baby girl, shackled to a hospital bed, in a vulnerable position exposed to all, without family and only corrections officers by my side."