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Address:
Central Hall, Oldham Street, Manchester, M1 1JQ
Tel 0161 236 2462
PRISON PRAYER LETTER
We are just coming to the end of August as I write this; the news is rocked by the death of young children being shot and young people doing the shooting. A man travelling home from a festival has been shot on the motorway, are we safe anywhere? Every time I turn the radio on or pick up a newspaper the headlines shout at me ‘the world is going mad!’
When I am reading and listening to the terrible things that happen to people’s families my heart aches for them, moms and dads losing their children in such shocking ways.
Then I remember the work I am involved in. Some say ‘why bother, let them rot in prison’. That’s a difficult statement to respond to and I even find myself avoiding it sometimes for fear of insensitively saying the wrong thing. Do you ever feel like that?
I have been working with offenders for 8 years now, time flies when you’re having fun! In all that time I have never regretted serving in this area, I was asked by the gospel to go to the prisoner and those on the edge. Those who mess up and cause damage in other peoples lives, and theirs, through greed, selfishness, hate, addiction, desperation and despair. I am constantly reminded that the bible asks us to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul’ then ‘love your neighbour as yourself’.
I can’t be picky about which parts of the bible I want to apply to me; those people who fill our prisons are my neighbours, they are part of our communities. As I write this I already know that I am writing to those who believe this as well.
The book of Ecclesiastes, on first inspection, can be seen to be a very negative book. However the more you read it the better it gets, the writer seems to be in some dark place and everything has become difficult for him. As you go though the book there is a familiar echo ‘everything is meaningless’, and yet the writers heart becomes transparent when he writes things like this:
Ecc1: 9-14 What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.
He has set eternity in the hearts of men, and on the days when the news is full of pain I have to remember it’s for those people who have done some real damage to others. God has put Chaplaincies and their volunteers in places which help some of these men and women realise that there is a God who loves them. He has put you in a place to pray that they will open their hearts and minds to the ever lasting arms of Jesus. My desire and the desire of GMCC is that people will continue to find that eternity in their hearts, that they will live according to His will and not theirs.
When my days become a little despondent I am reminded of the Grace of God shown in the men whose lives have been changed by love and the gift of Salvation from our most wonderful God; when I meet with volunteers and ex offenders whose lives have been given some meaning for the first time, ‘when God makes everything beautiful in His time’.
Let’s continue to pray for our communities, for forgiveness, for change, for restoration. Pray for the families of those who have been offended against, pray for the offender, not so they can be excused, but that hope and healing may take place in all their hearts.
Then I can say ‘the world isn’t going mad’ and I wont
agree that ‘everything is meaningless’.
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