 Add to the Beautyby Sara Groves We come with beautiful secrets We come with purposes written on our hearts, written on our souls We come to every new morning With possibilities only we can hold, that only we can hold Redemption comes in strange place, small spaces And I want to add to the beauty It comes in small inspirations It comes in loving community Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces And I want to add to the beauty This is grace, an invitation to be beautiful Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces And I want to add to the beauty |
“And I want to add to the beauty, to tell a better story.” Sara Groves
The more I see God work through Hope Shows (and Sara Groves and Christian music radio and everyone else who has partnered with us this year) to tell the story of prison ministry, the more I understand my commission to keep telling the story of the struggles, needs and hopes of our nation’s inmates, former inmates and their families.
But it’s been a hard-fought battle to acquire this peace with prison ministry … a lot of letting go of past passions and people I valued, a lot of trust that God had a plan for the broken pieces I held in my hands, a lot of confusion over next steps, a lot of support in the confusion, a lot of tears tears followed by a lot of renewed determination, a lot of pain and a lot of hope. And God has provided a lot of guidance, provision and confirmation … often not as much as I wanted 
, but definitely as much as I needed.
Sara Groves challenges us to respond with beauty to life’s challenges in a podcast from a chapel service at Gordon College (recorded in the fall of 2008*). She examined how we can respond to life’s difficulty and disappointments … either with anger, hurtfulness and violence or with love and beauty.
“That, I feel, is our great choice,” states Groves, “whether we respond the way the world would respond or whether, throughout our lives, we counter-intuitively, by the grace of God, not of our own strength, but through the great gift of Jesus Christ, respond with beauty in a world that is absolutely starved of it and absolutely void of it. And in that way we give good connotation to the message of Jesus Christ.”
She encouraged the audience to help narrate this Gospel story that desperately needs to be retold over and over again. “If you do this, your life is going to reverberate – it’s going to sound off like a cellist in a war zone.” Groves was referring to a story she told about a cellist who responded to great loss experienced during the Bosnian War by playing his music in the middle of a bomb crater that had killed innocent men, women and children. “Many people say the media attention from that … hastened the end of that war.”
Author and megachurch pastor, David Platt, poses a similar choice in his New York Times best-selling book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
Platt consistently communicates his passion for re-telling the story of Jesus and His concern for those who need our help and our Hope. “I believe that God has uniquely created every one of His people to impact the world. Some may count it as idealistic, but I believe it is thoroughly biblical, rooted in Psalm 67:1-2, yet covering Scripture from beginning to end. God is in the business of blessing His people so that His ways and His salvation might be made known among all people.”
As a college student I lacked self-awareness, self-confidence, spiritual maturity and purpose, and my response to the challenges of that season of life resulted in depression, accompanied by a lack of direction (and more anger than I’ve probably truly owned) … and God, in the way that only He can do, brought beauty from the pain through family, numerous opportunities for professional growth and a supportive community.
From this foundation, He’s equipped me to respond to a second season of loss and change over two decades later with greater confidence, hope and faith … and a deepened belief that God was in charge, on the job and on task working to do something new with new pain, fear and uncertainty.
It has not been easy. This season continues to challenge and stretch me in areas that I would often choose – on my own accord – to remain comfortable and, well, less-stretchy , but, if I would have chosen an easier path, I would have missed it. It being the “bleacher girls” at Lincoln Correctional Center praying for Sara Groves and her band before the prison concert (you’ve not heard prayer until you’ve heard these faithful inmates share their hearts with God … it was a true “Chorus of the Saints”). It being the joy and appreciation on the faces of 500 inmates at a Sara Groves concert. It being conversations about prison ministry on the nation’s largest Christian music radio network … and so many other its.
This time around He’s invited me to share the comfort He provided me years before with others deeply in need of the same comfort of connection, commission and community. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5).
As we pass on our Comfort, our Hope and our Confidence our lives tell the story of God’s active, engaging, unfailing presence on the journey – as He invests in us, we are equipped to invest in others. We can respond to past pain and shame with beauty in the present and hope for the future.
And I believe God has designed our individual responses to take the form of ministry unique to our experiences. I have nurtured various ministry interests for many years, testing the waters in the areas of depression, art therapy, career development, parenting, but I never felt commissioned to move forward with any of these interests until I was asked to produce a prison concert.
What is so very interesting to me is that, through Hope Shows, I now have the opportunity:
- to care for those struggling with depression and loneliness, common mental health issues for our inmates
- to facilitate the availability of musical instruments and craft supplies in prisons – and instruction for both – through donations of treasures and talents, and by doing so encourage inmates to discover their beautiful new identity in Christ through the creation of beautiful works of art
- to talk about skill development, education and career planning with soon-to-be-released inmates and former inmates
- to empathize with – and speak into – the needs of families of inmates left to live life in the absence of an incarcerated parent/spouse.
| “… respond with beauty in a world that is absolutely starved of it …”
~ Sara Groves |
God, in His goodness, created a new portrait of hope from my life’s pieces as a beautiful, unique response to pain, sin and loss. I believe He has a beautiful, unique response for each of us willing to seek Him out and go where He calls. My joy in the journey comes from a simple peace that I’ve found my place in His story for me … and as Sara says, “by the grace of God, not of [my] own strength, but through the great gift of Jesus Christ.”
God has redefined beauty for me in my professional endeavors during the last eighteen months. Beauty has shown up in:
- a former inmate who attended one of our first Hope Shows benefit events unaware of the prison ministry focus for the night … and his response in support the prison show.
- God’s orchestration of the first Hope Shows prison concert featuring Sara Groves and her band at Lincoln Correctional Center (LCC), a women’s medium-security prison in Lincoln, IL.
- the prayer of an amazing group of female inmates inviting God’s blessing over the concert (these ladies became affectionately known as the “bleacher girls” because they watched the event from the bleachers in the back when they weren’t assisting us)
- witnessing 500 female inmates tune their hearts in to an evening with an amazing songwriter, whose heart was tuned in to the women in attendance.
- the scarred face of a beautiful African American inmate smiling and singing … I will not forget her.
- a former inmate, and friend of Hope Shows, getting her first (post-incarceration) job after two years of looking for a position following her release from prison.
- a group of male inmates requesting a Hope Shows event at their facility, and one of them asking, hesitantly, if he has to be a Christian to attend (I assured him he would be invited and welcomed).
- an email from a former LCC inmate expressing her appreciation of the Hope Shows event she attended prior to her release (our first email from a Hope Shows prison concert attendee).
- the investment by INO Records and Sara Groves to produce and release a live recording of the Hope Shows prison concert, and then donating proceeds from the project to future Hope Shows events.
- hearing the ladies of Lincoln Correctional Center singing, “Carols,” with Sara Groves and her band on K-Love, the nation’s largest Christian music network.
- encouraging comments of K-Love listeners in response to K-Love Morning Show posting the link to the video from the Hope Shows prison concert with Sara.
- a few moments with my sister’s friend – the one whose story God used to get my attention about prison ministry – now the mother of a young son managing a successful business.
- and, a personal addition … an invitation to Prison Fellowship headquarters in Lansdowne, VA to meet with a team of individuals committed to prison ministry. The teenager who read PF Founder Chuck Colson’s book, Born Again, and the young lady who visited a family friend in prison, drove on to the sacred campus as a woman called to partner with this invaluable team … only God can orchestrate these opportunities. (Read “If You Spend Yourself …” for more on this journey.)
This is beauty. And I deeply desire to add to it …
–
* Visit iTunes to hear “Gordon Chapels: Art, Music, Justice – Chapel, November 3, 2008″
