by Matthew B. Harper

“Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, …let thy bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord…”(160)

The above prayer comes from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. It is a common yearning that we find in the Scriptures, and in the liturgy. We are praying to be delivered, and that the delivery might come speedily! Oh how often we forget the words of the 23^rd Psalm. David reminds us that our delivery comes through the valleys, not from them. And it seems somehow unfair to read the 23^rd psalm without first reading the 22^nd, whose powerful words of painful longing were spoken by Christ on the cross.

I love the Psalms. Every human emotion can be found there. If we are bold enough to read all of the psalms, and not just the pretty ones used in most churches, then we can be surprised. The full breadth of the Psalter shows more of our humanness than it does our holiness. And in my life I can be disappointingly human. I can be petty and angry, I can be depressed and lonely, I can even be lustful and covetous; I am only human. Often the prison atmosphere seems to intensify our worst and least attractive traits.

But Jesus didn’t come to give us a life suddenly free of all suffering, or free from all hardships. Jesus did come to endure them with us, to bring us comfort, to direct our gaze again towards the eternal God, and to bring hope. God’s incarnation into flesh shows us not a freedom from life, but a new and joyful existence in this very life. Jesus comes to us, to be with us, and to guide us into this new existence in God. That’s what Christmas is all about.

Come, O Father saving Son, who o’er sin the victory won. Boundless shall your kingdom be; grant that we it’s glories see. (Hymn 54)

by Matthew B. Harper

O Lord my God, I cried to thee for help, and thou hast healed me. (Psalm 30:2)

There is great pain in the Hebrew Bible, in the laments, in the prophets, and in the psalms. Throughout all of the pain is a sure confidence in the deliverance of the Lord. But not all of our hopes will be realized on this side of heaven. That is a true and painful reality. Yet we live in hope. We cannot give up on hope because it is not enough just to survive.

In prison you cannot even try to do God’s work preaching a message of mere survival and morality. We must preach, teach, live, and show forth hope. And this hope cannot simply be an empty hope of freedom or material things. The hope that guides us and gives direction is a hope that comes only through, and from, God.

I daydream of blue waters and open seas, but even more I daydream of living my life over again, living it better. And it is a painful truth I must live with that my crimes can never be undone; they can never be satisfied; there will never be complete healing, and I may never see freedom. I have watched too many men in here die, old and forgotten, to be able to deny that possible reality.

But the hope endures. Hope has been called the most dangerous thing in prison, and it is. It is also the most liberating.

In God all our hopes and dreams will find fulfillment

No eye has known the sight, no ear has heard such delight: Alleluia! Therefore we sing to greet our king; forever let our praises ring. (Hymn 61)