Lessons From My Cell
Words can pierce. Words can inspire. Words can empower.
May you allow the words coming up next in quotations pierce, inspire and empower you today.
“And here is a Scripture from the Bible I like, Jeremiah 29:11, because I know he has a plan for me, in my future to come Amen.”
No? Nothing? What’s so empowering about that? You’ve heard that verse a million times? You don’t really believe it anyway? Your present looks rather bleak so how in the world can your future look any brighter? They’re just words?
Let me wrap context around those words and see if it illuminates anything in your spirit.
“Pen Pal” has never been a burning passion of mine. In fact, I am grateful for the creation of Facebook just so I will connect with people I NEVER would have otherwise. Facebook is a “pen pal” program I can follow. But…actually taking out paper and pen and literally writing something, not to mention addressing, stamping and mailing the thing. So not gonna happen in my world! So not! …Or so I thought.
There is no Facebook in prison.
There are however, many teens in prison. Teens who never hear from another person outside the razor wire. Teens whose parents don’t contact them. Teens hungry for a word from anyone who cares.
I’ve meet several of those teens recently. I interacted with them through an art camp and then followed up with a visit. I couldn’t help myself – I wrote two of them. The old fashioned snail mail way. I sent them each a Scripture that I was praying for them. Then I waited. I waited to see if they would respond. I even gave them a self addressed stamped envelope so they could respond. I used One Heart’s address (www.oneheart.com to find out more) as a return address: not my own.
Within a week I had a response from one of the inmates. It chronicled his desire for prayer. Asking for prayers that he would “live a better positive life” and seeking prayers that “When I get out to knot fall back to my old ways, and to be a better man, and to hope they let me go back to high school.”
What really blew me away was that he sent me a Scripture that he had been thinking about. One he believes in. One that he clings to. Below is his quote:
“And here is a Scripture from the Bible I like, Jeremiah 29:11, because I know he has a plan for me, in my future to come Amen.”
Incarcerated youth saying, “I KNOW He has a plan for me, in my future to come AMEN.”
State issued clothes, institutional food, boundaries determined by razor wire prison inmate saying, “I KNOW He has a plan for me, in my future to come AMEN.”
Let that sink in.
This closet stuffed, gourmet food, plane, train and automobile boundary-less woman needs to let THOSE words pierce, inspire and empower her.
He is freer than many who have never seen a cell. He has hope. He is an inspiration.
How about you? Could you use a new view, a renewed perspective today about your life? Why not follow a future leader and begin with saying the same thing about your life;
“I KNOW He has a plan for me, in my future to come Amen.”
