Hope For The Hopeless
The Prisons, especially Nigerian Prisons is not a place you wish for your enemies. It is a sentence to hopelessness and death! Seeing or even imagining people in prison, should tell us how blessed and fortunate we are not to be confined into that state of near hopelessness.
Some of the inmates are probably innocent for what they are being charged, while majority are awaiting trial, but yet, they face that dark walls of hopelessness in the prisons. Many of us free mortals are more guilty than some of them, but God in His infinite mercies, have shielded us, and covered our nakedness.
Most of them face a world of hopelessness, and it can be frustrating, discouraging, creating all sorts of anxiety, stress and anger. Which turns into giving up, and lifelessness. Hopelessness sucks the life and resilience out of people.
Some of us find ourselves in a different state of hopelessness, where we are unable to help ourselves, and have to be supported, like the man by the pool of Bethesda for 38 years, the Cripple by the Beautiful Gate etc. If you find yourself in a situation you are not immediately able to help yourself, and you need a second degree help; you are in a ‘prison’ of a sort. It could be financial, emotional, physical, spiritual etc.
Our visit to the prison is prophetic, we will literary pray ourselves out of any prisons we have found ourselves, and will never be confined into any prison again.
In Matt. 25: 31 – 46; our Lord Jesus Christ talks of the benefits attached in visiting in the prisons. We shall stand ‘at His word.’
The prophet Isaiah shared God’s message and plan to bring comfort and real hope through the Messiah: “The Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of prison to those who are bound… Isaiah 61: 1-2.
Giving this hope was so important to God that He was willing to sacrifice His Son to make our rescue possible. In the midst of the troubles of this life, the apostle Paul tells us that God is “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” 2nd Cor. 1: 3-4.
It is time for us to comfort our sisters in this kind of confinement. On Wednesday 22nd March 2017, we shall be leaving our comfort zone to visit the prisons. The bus will leave the church premises at 8.00am, we have gone through all the challenges to get this appointment, and the Prison Authorities are very strict on timing.
For those who are not able to attend, your money will go a long way, as you stand with us in this great prophetic move. The lists of needs are listed separately. May the good Lord bless you richly as you give towards this.
Your Vicar and friend,
The Revd. Kiri Wakama
