Sometimes I think that perhaps life is simply safer and easier in prison than out. Life in here can be difficult, painful, and violent, but there is a clarity and honesty to it. The outside world, one I’ve only seen on TV and in glossy magazines for 20 years now, seems to be consumed with acrimony and judgment. Rather than bringing us closer together, new technology is just documenting how we are splitting ourselves into tribes, and casting our anger at others. We are a world in need of a savior.
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Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 Keith Wiglusz Scripture affirms to us that Jesus sympathizes with our weakness. He himself felt weakness while on earth to pay the ultimate penalty for the sins of the whole world past, present and future. He was…
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As I lined up with other prisoners in a brick passageway, six Attica guards huddled in a group, wearing blue latex gloves and gripping wooden clubs. They stared at us as we waIked in pairs through the sepulchral corridor without speaking, like Franciscan monks on their way to vespers. …
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“When I came to prison I expected to find not just criminals, but truly evil and monstrous people. I had watched all the movies, read a few books, and seen enough stories on the local news that I just knew what evil people were like. I knew the horror of my own crimes, and feared I was just as evil.”…
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“What would the apostle Paul do if he heard about the mistreatment of brothers and sisters who return to our congregations and communities after being released from prison? I think we know exactly what Paul would do. Paul would write a letter!”…
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by Matthew B. Harper Acts 16:16–34 Psalm 97 Revelation 22:12–14, 16–17, 20–21 John 17:20–26 We are in the seventh week of Easter, and our extra readings from the Acts of the Apostles are drawing to a close. But before they…
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by LA Revelation 21:10-22; 22:1-5 There I was at the Commissary window, a friend of mine, an inmate worker who is himself a self-proclaimed Christian was there helping the cashier by bringing everything I had ordered to the register to…
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by AMN Fifth Sunday of Easter C Revelation 21:1-6 “The Endgame” Before the foundation of the Earth was formed, our Heavenly Father already had the “happily ever after” all figured out. The life that exists today and everything in it…
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Prison Lectionary launched in November 2015 and we are slowly building an archive of biblical interpretation in prison. We do not yet offer materials on every book of the New Testament but as more work is published it will become…
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by Matthew B. Harper Exodus 4:10-11 – But Moses said to the Lord “O my Lord, I have never spoken eloquently”… Then the Lord said to him “Who gives speech to mortals… Is it not I, the Lord?” Moses had…
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