Tuesday, March 1, 2011

A Christ Centered Prison Story

Story title: A Christ Centered Prison Story
By: Charles Colson in Christianity today

   Humaita Prison in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, houses 350 offenders. For the past 18 years it has been run not by the State but by Christian volunteers who became part of Prison Fellowship Brazil several years ago.
   I have been in prisons in 31 countries and in half the prisons in America. I have never seen an institution like Humaita. Its secret is more than just humane conditions and job training, crucial as these things are. The secret is found in a small cell in the prison's high security area.

    Our escort, an inmate "officer of the day" who carried the keys to the prison, led us to the notorious solitary punishment cell. In years past, prisoners had been thrown into it naked. were served one meager meal each day through a slot in the door, and were sometimes so crowded on top of one another that they suffocated. But we were told there was now only one prisoner in the cell.
   The inmate swung open the heavy steel door a crack and then stopped, asking if I was sure I wanted to go in. I nodded. Still, my stomach tightened as the doors swung open.
   But as I entered, I saw fresh flowers, an altar, and a central crucifix, with a banner proclaiming "Estamos Juntos: We are together." that he had served the sentence for all in that prison, and that he was with them still. And because of this knowledge of the suffering Christ among them, the offenders in Humaita are daily reminded of a truth that many of us offenders who line church pews every Sunday perhaps take for granted.

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