The following commentary originally appeared on the BreakPoint website.
When a man is sentenced to prison, he is not the only person in his family doing time. If we believe that fathers matter, it’s difficult to deny that his children are also serving a sentence of sorts.
Devoting the rest of his life to prison ministry wasn’t what Chuck expected to do when he got out of prison, but God had other plans.
It was just a few months before Chuck went home to Jesus. We were sitting in his home in Naples, Florida, and he was “schooling” me, as he did several times in the nine months he and I were together at Prison Fellowship.
I lost a good friend this week. He was killed in a tragic roadside accident, leaving behind his wife and three daughters. I was with his family at the hospital as they said their final good-byes and went home without him.
I was running on a bike path along a country road. With corn fields on either side, there was an abundance of grasshoppers on the path. As I ran along I noticed that the grasshoppers rapidly jumped into the high grass on either side in order to avoid getting crushed by my feet.
In the Old Testament we read how Nehemiah, a Jew in exile from his homeland, learned about the state of the survivors. The bearers of bad news told him, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace.
“Several years of prison ministry have convinced me that there are substantial parallels between what we think about incarceration and how we understand salvation.” So says religion professor Stephen Webb. In a recent article for First Things, Webb asserts that in order for spiritual renewal to take place in the United States, Christians must first turn their focus to the prison system.
It’s said that the great Renaissance artist Michelangelo never knew what he was going to sculpt when he started. When a piece of marble was delivered to him, he would examine it, and he would envision the form trapped inside it, waiting to be revealed with his hammer and chisel.
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.
God has called us all be His agents of restoration, helping everyone around us return to right, whole relationships with Himself, with our families, and with our neighbors.
I can think of no more exciting, important, or rewarding work to give our lives to, but restoration around us must start with restoration inside us.
How are Christians called to serve our broken neighbors? In a sermon to Ridge Point Community Church in Holland, Michigan, Prison Fellowship Ministries President and CEO Jim Liske discusses the importance of being “people of restoration” for those in need of God’s healing.
The Ghent Altarpiece is a magnificent piece of art. It was commissioned in the early 15th century, and it depicts the most important figures and scenes in the Christian story.
During World War II, the Nazis stole this priceless work of art – along with countless others – and hid it deep underground in a mine, intending to one day put it in a museum dedicated to the glory of the Fuhrer.
The following post originally appeared as a BreakPoint radio commentary.
For a long time, Prison Fellowship has believed that the United States incarcerates far too many people at far too high a cost. What’s more, that cost does not take into account an important set of victims: the innocent children of offenders.
As my friend Quovadis Marshall, the director of spiritual development at Prison Fellowship Ministries, likes to say, Christians aren’t primarily saved from something – we are saved for Someone. Yes, Jesus, redeems us from our sins, and that’s hugely important. But we are saved in order to have a relationship with the living God who loves us.
We think a lot about restoration at Prison Fellowship Ministries. We believe that restoration is the theme of God’s activity throughout Scripture – and in the present day, too. Since we want to take our cue from Him, we work and pray to make restoration the goal of everything we do with prisoners, returning citizens, families, financial partners, and everyone in between.