"This may sound strange, but going to jail was the best thing that ever happened to me." A recently incarcerated man who had come to Morning Glory for breakfast and clothing said to me.

He didn't tell me what his crime was, but admitted that he was on a "bad path," and going to prison gave him time to think, pray and reorder his life. He had been in jail for three years.

I'm sure when he first went to jail that he didn't think it was the best thing to happen in his life, rather, he came to that revelation much later.

Though we may have not spent time in jail like the man who came to Morning Glory, we may have been "imprisoned" by guilt of a past deed, or sadness from a loss, or anger due to someone hurting us. In the second reading this Sunday, the letter to the Hebrews says that we should endure some of our "trials" in life as loving discipline from a caring parent-God. That can be hard to see at the time, but if we can see that, it can in some way become our "get-out-of-jail" card.  To be sure, God does not want any of us to suffer, we know though that some suffering is part of life.  Jesus is with us through everything we go through, all our suffering and our joys, our trials and our celebrations.

"At the time,
all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain,
yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness." (Heb. 12:11) 

This past Wednesday, John was interviewing a guest who spoke about his seven years in prison and how much he missed his family. The guest is now in a halfway house and said that on his first day in the halfway house he was called for dinner, called by his first name. He broke down crying. The staff member asked, “Why are you crying?” He told her, “For the past seven years I’ve been called by my prison number, no one has called me by name in seven years.”