God s love is not conditional. We must know that God loves us, no matter what. That can never be taken away and that can give a great sense of personal peace. We think of human happiness as being contingent on things or quick fixes to our pain in life. The pain of incarceration, he said, encompasses many things sorrow, loss of dignity, shame, powerlessness.
Inmates are truly the poor in spirit and they often suffer abandonment from family and friends.
They may blame the system for their pain. We must plant the seeds in people s lives which can transform them. Many of these inmates have found themselves in situations that they do not understand. The events of their lives have pushed them in a certain direction that even they do not understand. We must take the brokenness, the hurt, the pain and be instruments of grace, letting people know they can grow.