Missions

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OK, I’m Out. Now What?

Imagine you’ve been in prison for 15 years. What are your fist thoughts after getting out? I have to find a job. But if I do, how will I get there? What if they want an address? I don’t have one. I don’t have a phone either.
It can be hard to have sympathy for someone getting out of jail. I know because I used to be like that too. That is until I started spending time in prison. Not as an inmate or a visiting family member, but as a minster. I got to spend time with men from different backgrounds, religions and races. They varied widely in age too. But they all had one thing in common. Each of them was created in the image of God. Yes they got lost along the way, but how many of us haven’t? Looking at me you would never guess that I was a pot head or that ,in order to keep up my own supply I became a dealer. I just never got caught.
Read the bible and you’ll see that the inmates and I are not alone in our transgressions. Moses killed someone. Noah got drunk. King David whom the Bible calls a an after God’s own heart, arranged to have someone killed. Rahab was an ancestor of Jesus, but she was also a prostitute and could there be anyone more guilty of perjury that Peter? Where would they be if the God of the Bible were not a God of second chances? By my best guess I’ve had 156,732 second chances. But today isn’t over yet.
So the next time you see or hear of someone fresh from prison and looking for a second chance, try to remind yourself that the first person Jesus took to Heaven was thief. In the words of that immortal philosopher Casey Stengel “You could look it up.” Luke 23:43

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