October 21, 2024
Our SportsReach team just returned from a trip to Florida. It’s quite a big deal. They travelled 17 hours to play softball with inmates at five prisons, sharing the gospel after every game. They are only at each prison for a few hours. Last week, they had more than 50 professions of faith!
The team has made several trips to Florida and Georgia prisons. Over the last few years, hundreds have been saved! After they return, their captain, Michael Haney, gives me a list of the new believers along with their DOC numbers so we can send them our newsletter.
I find each one on the state’s Department of Corrections data base to make sure we have the spelling of their name and number correct. From that resource, I can also see their “out date” and make a note if it will be soon. Going through the newly saved guys, I found two who would be out within weeks. After serving years in prison, they were only days away from being released. The timing of the SportsReach trip and the team sharing the salvation story had come just in time. A month later they would have missed it!
I took a minute to soak it in. These men had been so close to leaving prison without knowing Jesus. This would change everything! Starting a new life after incarceration would be difficult. Now they would have Jesus walking that road with them! It had been a God-timed meeting.
I LOVE how God puts puzzle pieces together. His timing is mind boggling. He orchestrates days, years, events in our lives for a purpose. We often can’t see exactly how He is working but we can trust that He is.
In Acts 16, Paul, Silas, and friends had gone to pray. A slave girl who was possessed by an evil spirit, a miraculous healing, angry slave owners, and a mob all contributed to Paul and Silas being stripped, beaten, and thrown into prison. In the inner cell. With feet in stocks.
It’s a riveting true story you may have read a time or two. Most often, we focus on the strength and spirit of Paul and Silas. Praying and singing to God at midnight is remarkable. We can draw courage from their actions, remembering that God is with us and will sustain us in dark or hard times. Verse 25 tells us the other prisoners were listening.
This week, I realized the brevity of Paul and Silas’ presence at the jail. They were only there for a short time-just hours. At midnight, when they were praying and singing, an earthquake shook the foundation of the prison and broke every chain. In a dramatic moment, the jailer awoke, was terrified inmates had escaped and nearly took his own life. Paul urgently called out that everyone was accounted for. Overwhelmed with gratitude, the jailer asked how he could be saved. Ultimately, he and his whole household believed and were baptized. It’s a favorite story. Every time I read it I find a new nugget.
I wonder about the prisoners who were left in the jail. They were there when Paul and Silas had been dragged in bruised and bleeding, then put in stocks. They were there when Paul and Silas began praying and singing at the darkest time of the night. They were there when the earthquake shook the foundation of the prison. Their chains had been broken, too. Yet, after Paul and Silas left, they remained. How were they affected by the presence of Paul and Silas? Did they also give their hearts to Jesus after the earthquake? Did they walk in the ways of Paul and Silas’ Jesus after their final release?
Paul and Silas would never have met the jailer had they not been arrested. Had the angry slave owners not stirred up the mob, the jailer would have continued his work unphased and lost. Yet, God orchestrated the paths of the missionaries to intersect with both physical and spiritual prisoners.
In one day, Paul and Silas impacted a slave girl, her slave owners, magistrates, a crowd, prisoners, the jailer, the jailer’s family, and some officers. In one day! We never know how our words and actions can impact this lost world. Minutes and hours can make a mark on a life.
Today, this amazing story can impress on us to make our moments count!
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Dawn Reed is a pastor's wife and newspaper columnist. Reach her at preacherwife7@yahoo.com.
