Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: SLANG (05/14/20)
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TITLE: Jail Time With Jesus | Previous Challenge Entry
By Dolores Stohler
05/17/20 -
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A week before, two of my friends at MAP International approached my desk with the words, “We want you to go with us”.
“Where?” I asked, surprised.
“To the slammer,” Juanita replied, and laughed at the bewildered expression on my face. “We volunteer for Pace Institute. Every Friday night we drive to the Cook County Jail in Chicago with a couple of other women to conduct a Bible study with the inmates. You should be part of this ministry.”
I cringed inwardly. No way was I going to that place! It was located in the toughest neighborhood in Chicago. But later I remembered a day five years earlier when I lay in a hospital bed following cancer surgery. A Bible propped before me, I was reading Matthew 25:34-35 ending with “...I was in prison and you came to visit me.” I heard the voice of The Spirit within me saying “all these things you have done but you've never been with me in prison.” A feeling of guilt hung over me now. I needed to enter “the slammer”.
It was not as bad as I feared. Entering a large room with tables in the basement of the prison, each volunteer took a place at one of them. At first I was allowed to sit with Sister Grace who would be my mentor. Grace was a Catholic nun who visited inmates on Death Row at the state penitentiary. She'd managed to obtain pardons for several of them so I was a little in awe of her. After several weeks they told me Grace was gone and I would have a table of my own. I almost went into shock! I needed Grace, I thought.
When Friday night arrived once more, the old apprehension returned. “I can't do this, Lord,” I pleaded with the Holy Spirit as a group of young black guys stopped before my table and began to pull out chairs. “Be quiet and listen,” came back at me. “Get up and pour them all a drink.” On the table before me sat a pitcher of Kool-Aid. So I rose from my chair and went around the table pouring each a drink in a glass before them, introducing myself and learning their names. The frowns on their dark faces turned into smiles as I proceeded around the table so I began the lesson with a feeling of peace and purpose.
We soon became friends, at ease with one another. Some of them knew their Bibles as well as I since they read them all day long. And they began to tell me stories about their private lives and why they landed in prison. One of them, a young Hispanic fellow, stopped me after class and told me about his problem with alcohol and how he had tried to murder his mother-in-law when under the influence. Now his wife was divorcing him and his life was totally ruined, or so he thought. I related his story to the ministry director's wife and she was surprised. “We didn't know why he was in prison,” she admitted. “These lessons are supposed to be for non-violent inmates. I see this man is getting out of jail tomorrow. But now that we know more about him, we'll get him into a halfway house.” She regarded me in wonder, “I don't think any of them have ever confessed their crimes to any of us before. I know I've never heard their stories. What's your secret?'
I shrugged. “It's very simple. I've just never looked down on them is all. Jesus partied with sinners and even stooped to wash their feet, Who am I to feel myself better than Jesus?”
The prison ministry turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. It was a time when I felt really close to Jesus. I was able to shed my pride and overcome the limitations of a sheltered life in the Chicago suburbs. With humility and compassion, I ate cake and talked with men who had a whole lot of disadvantages to overcome. Jail time with Jesus – you should try it.
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