Saturday, October 31The Least of These
The Letter on the Dresser
Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.
DevotionalSaturday, October 31
Or read it here
To the brother who came home and has not looked back
I see you. The monitor is off and the lease is in your name now. Nobody at work knows the number you used to answer to, and you would like to keep it that way.
So when the church announces the jail ministry, you study the bulletin. The letter from the man who had the bunk under yours sits on the dresser, unopened since July.
I am not writing to shame you. I understand it. The mind protects itself by putting distance between you and the place that hurt. Every face from inside is a mirror, and some mornings you cannot afford a mirror. So you call it moving forward. Some of it is. Some of it is fear wearing the clothes of progress. And if you are honest, there are days you look at those men the way the intake officer once looked at you. Ask the Spirit to search that. He can tell healing from hiding when you can’t.
Hebrews says it plainly:
Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them.
The first people to read that letter knew chains. A few chapters earlier the writer thanks them for having compassion of me in my bonds while their own goods were being taken (Hebrews 10:34). He is talking to people who had been through it, and he asks them not to forget. As bound with them means you carry it as if the cuffs were on your own wrists, because in the body of Christ they are.
Here is what undoes me. The night they came for Jesus, John says they bound him (John 18:12). The Son of God held out his wrists. Hebrews says he suffered without the gatethen writes the bravest sentence in the letter: Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach (13:12-13). He remembered us from inside the cell, and when a dying man beside him said, “Jesus, remember me,” he answered that same day.
You were remembered like that. Whatever was written against you was nailed to his cross (Colossians 2:14), and shame does not get a vote on whether you walk back through that gate.
The men still inside are your brothers, and Christ put his own name on their cell: I was in prison, and ye came unto me (Matthew 25:36). Open the letter on the dresser. Write back one page. You can go back for who is there without going back to who you were.
Remember them. He remembered you.
Ronnie
Pray
Lord Jesus, I have kept my distance from the people you call your own. Some of it was fear, and some of it was the old contempt I learned for myself, turned on them. I have used being busy and being better as reasons to forget. Forgive me. You were bound and led outside the gate for me, and you remembered a dying thief when no one else would. Your blood has answered what was written against me, and I am a son in your house. Holy Spirit, give me courage to go where you already are, and let me carry those in chains as if I wore them too. Amen.
Practice
Write one page today to someone who is still inside, even if all it says is that you have not forgotten them. If you have never been inside, ask your church or a local reentry ministry how to start writing to someone who is.
Carry
He remembered me from inside the cell. I will remember them.