Each week I am blessed to be with men and women coming out of incarceration. While it’s a step of relief offering a sense of freedom, it is also filled with uncertainty. What comes next? Can I survive ‘out there’? The need to track down identification, a birth certificate, Drivers License or State ID. A phone. Transportation. You can’t get work without these. Clothes, because all I’ve got is what’s on my body now.
And how can I mend what’s been broken with family? In me? How can I get free of addictions?
Prison has so many layers. How do we get set free? Who has the keys?
I’ve seen the transformation in those who turn to Christ for help. They become bright with hope, confident in new abilities, in each step they make their way through. They carry gratitude for the Savior that is at their side.
‘I built walls around my heart ...Walls became my prison, and I forgot the sound of grace.. Then I heard you calling softly through the darkness of my soul, ‘You don’t have to stay here child, I have come to make you whole’.’
Jesus, Let the Prison Doors Open - Lauren Daigle
It seems to be instinctual to back away from someone who appears stricken, or trodden down. Unless we know that person, or understand what they are stricken with. Isaiah describes Christ as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief; someone we’d hide our faces from. Yet what weighs Him down is OUR sorrows, OUR grief, that WE have caused. [Isaiah 53:3-5] How can we repay Him? How can we say ‘Thank you’?
‘I..wonder how He could love me, a sinner condemned, unclean. He took my sins and my sorrows, He made them His very own; He bore the burden to Calvary and suffered, and died alone.’
I Stand Amazed - Reawaken Hymns
Crazy thing is that with all the pain we cause Him, He still wants us. His love for us never diminishes. ‘No matter how far I am away from home, that’s how far your love will go.’
How Far - Tasha Layton
He continually invites us in, to enjoy everything He has to bless us with, putting our pains away.
‘I could hear my old man sayin’, ‘son, just be still, Cause you can’t find peace like this in a bottle or a pill.’ Sometimes, whether I’m lookin’ for him or not, that’s where I find God.’
Where I Find God - Larry Fleet
His love is everlasting, so our sorrows don’t have to be.