A young woman I met recently was 22 years old. Her adult life had barely begun, but she had already done quite a bit of hard living. She was one of several children born to an overburdened mom. Her dad was not around to help.
She learned to sell drugs. She got good at it, and she even helped set her mother up in a nice apartment. But her criminal activities caught up with her. When I met her, she wasn’t wearing a college cap and gown and listening to a commencement speech, like thousands of other young women her age were that week. She was wearing a prison uniform in Shakopee, Minnesota.
In prison, this young woman was getting ready to enter a values-based reentry program, using Prison Fellowship curriculum, at the women’s prison in Shakopee, where she will get the tools she needs to start her life afresh. She had just been accepted into the program, but already she felt the love and friendship offered to her in that community.
In relationships, she was accustomed to using other people or being used by them. When grace came into her life in the form of loving volunteers and fellow prisoners, it overwhelmed her like a flood. She wept as she tried to explain what it meant to her.
Our nation’s prisons and jails need a flood of grace. They need wave after wave of God’s unexpected, undeserved love and mercy, shown through His Body, the Church. Will you help us send the flood with your prayers, gifts, and time? Learn how at www.prisonfellowship.org.
article by Jim Liske PRISON FELLOWSHIP
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