Second Chances

This morning I attended a different type of worship service.  The church I've been going to in Illinois has done a lot of work with the prison in Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary.  It is the largest maximum security prison in the US and is known as the "Alcatraz of the South." 90% of the men who go into the prison will die there. 1/2 have committed murder.  Today part of our worship team was down there and the other half was in Elmhurst. We had a joint worship service with them through webcam.  Its amazing what technology can do.  First off, when they showed the chapel at the prison, I was amazed there were hundreds there.  In our bulletin it said, " The spiritual community at Angola has become a model for prisons throughout our nation.  Inmates are transferred from Angola prison to other institutions to serve as missionaries throughout the prison system."  Apparently a lot of this also started because of the warden there.  Its amazing what God can do through one person.  According to what was said this morning, he has really been a light in this dark place.
During the service, We would lead a couple songs than they would..overall it went very good.  Just 1 lapse in technology and only for a minute.  This opportunity made you think about second chances.  Most of these people will never be given a second chance.  They  are locked up forever.  Now I admit, sometimes I am just as hard on the prisoners. I forget about them, I often feel that they deserve to be there and many of them do.  Sometimes its easy to forget that people do change and I felt like this was evident during the worship service this morning.  To see all of these men, worshiping with all of their hearts and realizing that many of them will never leave the Angola premises is heartbreaking.  Maybe they do deserve to be there, but to me its just a reminder that these people need to be shown love and be given a chance.  It was a great service and I just thought it was a really cool thing to do for Missions Emphasis Week.  It was a really neat service and I'm kind of finding it difficult to put into words.  It just seemed like the atmosphere in church was so much different today and it was a wonderful thing to be a part of.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Sunday and wonderful week.