It was on November 28, 1965, that fighter pilot Howard Rutledge’s plane was shot down right into the hands of the North Vietnam Army. Quickly he was shuttled to the “Heartbreak Hotel,” one of the noto...
Liu Chi Kung, who placed second to Van Cliburn in the 1948 Tchaikovsky competition, was imprisoned a year later during the Cultural Revolution in China. During the entire seven years he was held, he w...
Genuine confession and repentance can be costly, as I have discovered in dealing with offenders. Take the case of the young man in the Washington area, deeply involved with his church and solidly conv...
No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were born in the wilderness. Most of the Epistles were written in a prison. The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers ha...
2 Timothy 3:16-17, Romans 15:4, Isaiah 55:11, Hebrews 4:12-13, 2 Peter 1:19-21, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35, Isaiah 41:8-10, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Psalm 46:, Genesis 37:12-36, 1 Samuel 19:, 1 Samuel 20:, 2 Corinthians 11:23-30, 2 Corinthians 4:17, Acts 21:27-36
For seven years, Terry Anderson was held as a hostage of Shiite Muslim fundamentalists. The former reporter for the Associated Press had been taken captive and held as a political prisoner, and for se...
Pilgrim’s Progress smells of prison, for it was written in one. Thrown in jail for preaching the gospel without a license, Bunyan wrote a story in his cell. It is a story about life’s deepest question...
Major Harold Kushner was a prisoner of the Viet Cong for more than five years. Kushner describes one of his fellow American prisoners, a tough twenty-four-year-old Marine who had made a deal with thei...
When something has gone wrong, justice needs to be done and seen to be done. Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement examines exactly this same dynamic. The central character, Bryony Tallis, makes a grave mista...
I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denyi...
Lord Jesus, for our sake you were condemned as a criminal: Visit our jails and prisons with your pity and judgment. Remember all prisoners, and bring the guilty to repentance and amendment of life acc...
Ephesians 2:8-9, Galatians 3:24, Romans 8:3-4, Acts 9:1-19, Matthew 5:17
The law is harsh and cannot help us to receive forgiveness. In Craddock Stories, a collection of outstanding stories by Fred Craddock, is the following account with one who could understand law, but ...
When the great theologian Jürgen Moltmann was sixteen years old in 1943, he was drafted into the German army and was soon captured by the Allied forces. He wound up in a prisoner of war camp in Scotla...
On a trip to South Africa, I met a remarkable woman named Joanna. She is of mixed race, part black and part white, a category known there as “Coloured.” As a student she agitated for change in aparthe...
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not bet...
Years ago, visiting one of the London prisons, I heard a statement made by one of the prisoners that impressed me very much. He said to me, ‘You do not know what a relief it is to be found out.’ We di...
Lord Jesus, who came to liberate the captives, remember the prisoners, we pray, those locked up in jails. …Release from the prisons of their own making all those who struggle with habits that bind t...
Luke 15:11-32, Acts 16:22-26, Genesis 39:41, 1 Peter 4:16, Psalm 34:18, Romans 5:3-5, 2 Corinthians 12:9
I spent a considerable amount of time with a guy I’ll call Martin. As a brand-new follower of Christ, Martin felt guilty for having previously embezzled a lot of money from his employer. After discuss...
Psalm 118:8, Ezra 7:21, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Romans 15:4, Isaiah 55:11, Hebrews 4:12-13, 2 Peter 1:19-21, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35
The prince of Grenada, an heir to the Spanish crown, was sentenced to life in solitary confinement in Madrid’s ancient prison. The dreadful, dirty, and dreary nature of the place earned it the name, “...
Romans 2:11, James 2:1-4, Psalm 82:3-4, Zechariah 7:9-10, Proverbs 21:15
Robert H. Richards and Ethan Couch illustrate how opportunity bends toward affluent white males. Richards was found guilty of raping his three-year-old daughter, but because of his connection to the D...
But all at once I realized that it was not my success God had used to enable me to help those in this prison, or in hundreds of others just like it. My life of success was not what made this morning s...
1 Samuel 16:7, James 2:1-4, 1 Peter 3:3-4, Proverbs 31:30, 1 Samuel 16:7, Psalm 139:13-14, Leviticus 19:14
Two decades after I worked with the airmen, I read a fascinating article, “The Quasimodo Complex,” in The British Journal of Plastic Surgery, Two physicians reported in 1967 on a landmark study of e...
I cry out to you, O LORD; I say, "You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living." Listen to my cry for help, for I have been brought very low; save me from those who pursue me, f...
In his book, Who is this Man ? , Author and Pastor John Ortberg describes the major themes of Holy Week present in the film The Shawshank Redemption : The hope of resurrection is woven into a t...
First, Sheol in the Old Testament and Hades in the LXX and in Greco-Roman thought can be used to refer to both a general place for all the dead as well as a place of torment or consignment for the unr...
Jonah 4:2, Luke 23:39-43, Matthew 20:1-16, Luke 15:11-32, Isaiah 55:8-9
There’s a gut–wrenching scene in the Korean film Secret Sunshine that captures the scandal of grace better than any film I’ve ever seen. The scene takes place in a prison, as protagonist Shin-ae (Jeon...
While the illustration is somewhat dated, it brings up some of the crucial issues related to a modern approach to the subject of evil: Several television specials have been broadcast [on the subject...
In 1977, at the height of the Cold War, Anatoly Shcharansky, a brilliant young mathematician and chess player, was arrested by the KGB for his repeated attempts to emigrate to Israel. He spent thirtee...
Introduction Easter stands out from every other day. It’s time to celebrate and to reflect: how will you “preach the resurrection” and proclaim the new life we have in Jesus Christ? How do we invite ...
300 10-Minute Devotions For the past six years I’ve been a volunteer chaplain at Haywood Pathways Center , a Christian residential program for people working to turn their lives around from addict...