Thoughts From a Prison Cell (4)--Outcasts...all!

 

5/4/2012-- Encouraged my friend (the one who has lost custody of her disabled son--I'll call her Chrissy). She is really struggling in here.

"The only true and enduring motivation for the ministry of mercy is an experience and a grasp of the grace of God in the gospel. If we know we are sinners saved by grace alone, we will be both open and generous to the outcasts and the unlovely." Tim Keller

Blessed is he who comes to realize his condition of spiritual bankruptcy.

Matthew 5:3--Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

"It means a complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and self-reliance. It means a consciousness that we are nothing in the presence of God. It is nothing, then, that we can produce; it is nothing we can do in ourselves. It is just this tremendous awareness of our utter nothingness as we come face to face with God. That is to be poor in spirit." David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Imagining my own bankruptcy before God is easy in county jail. All believers, like Job, were sitting on the dung heap. God took us from that filthy, vile condition and put us in kingly robes and made us sit down with Him at His table. 

(I believe the following is from a book by Tim Keller. I read so many books that were available in prison and wrote down as much of it as I could, but I didn't always mark the references, and I apologize for that. At the time, they weren't meant for anything I would write in the future; they were my very lifeline.)

"The person who knows that he received mercy while an undeserving enemy of God will have a heart of love for even [and especially!] the most ungrateful and difficult persons."

"When a Christian sees prostitutes, alcoholics, prisoners, drug addicts, unwed mothers, the homeless, the refugees, he knows that he is looking in a mirror. Perhaps the Christian spent all his life as a respectable, middle-class person. No matter. He thinks: 'Spiritually, I was just like these people, though physically and socially I never was where they are now. They are outcasts. I was an outcast."

Yes, many people think this for brief moments from time to time. Do they really believe it?

This is so real to me now. Many professing Christians seem to have something basic missing in their "new natures" which is the understanding of their true spiritual condition. They are unable to give mercy to anyone "less than" because they don't believe they are desperate to receive God's mercy themselves. I have met more open, honest, truly broken, humbled people in one week than I have in 51 years of life. Thank You, Lord, for letting me truly see my bankrupt condition from every point of view. We have no real mirrors here, but only the faces of the helpless and hopeless. 

As I stare into the faces of the downcast, there's no judgment or condemnation to be found anywhere--just human beings trying to hold each other up in a desperate situation and condition. Lord, help Your church. Help those who sit in the average middle-class churches--sitting smugly week after week who think they are rich when they are in need and desperately bankrupt. Let judgment begin in Your house.

There is no one who is worthy. When we come to that understanding, we will not so easily give up on those who are in need.

It is sometimes hard to understand that this is my calling today...right now. Although I am a wife and mother, I have been separated from those I love and called to a different ministry for a season.

Things so painful I never want to forget:

• Going through 'hell' at trial
• Special six months with Jesse getting to really know his heart
• Trying to pack up the house--so proud of Jesse
• Hearing the painful thoughts of his life, his dreams, and goals
• Watching and hearing the strength and measure of his faith
• Hearing how he wants to be so supportive and how protective he is of his brothers and me
• Last Thursday morning--raw emotions (sentencing day)
• Tears dripping from our eyes in the car as we rode to the Courtroom
• Being able to hug my oldest son, tell him I love him and try to assure him that we will get through this
• Watching him be sentenced first
• Seeing him look desperately at me from his holding cell while I was being led to mine in the basement of the Courtroom until we were transported (and wouldn't see each other again for nine years except for one brief time in the courtroom less than a month later)
• Daddy telling he me how worried Jesse was for me

My firstborn child--I love you with all my heart! You are so special and God is at work powerfully in your life.

5/9/2012-- 8:00 p.m.--Breakfast--oatmeal, potatoes, biscuit, milk, chicory

Lunch--2 pieces white bread, [gross] lettuce, 2 slices of cheese, pink meat, cake[???], tea

Dinner--noodles with spicy meat {???], [gross] lettuce, applesauce, 2 pieces of bread, kool-aid

Finally, I got a 'pen' again. Pens you can buy from commissary are just inserts from a pen. My last pen ran out of ink after three days.

I talked to Daddy. It sounds like nothing is happening with our case so far. The boys are getting ready to come 'home' from college. My roommate is sleeping. Sitting here in a dimly lit room, there are t.v. sounds, ladies yelling in their cells, a correction officer yelling at the girls who are yelling, and the annoying tapping on the pipes. I talked quite a bit to my two special friends today. Every day I talk to more people. I took a shower and washed my clothes in the shower. That's a difficult maneuver, but everyone does it. I read every spare moment while continuing to wait for my Bible. My hunger for the Word is getting unbearable. When I come to a passage of Scripture in a book, I meditate on it for a long time.