Into the Scarred Hands of the Savior
I usually have one print book and one audio book going all the time. Last week’s audio book was The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radical, Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World by Rosaria Butterfield. If you have not yet read, or listened to, this book you should do so. It is so full of insightful and helpful things I also got a print copy so I can go back and take notes.
Butterfield weaves the story of Hank throughout the book. Hank was her across the street neighbor in her family’s Durham, NC community. She describes Hank as much like Bo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. He is a recluse who is the subject of much cruel gossip among the neighbors. The Butterfield family sets out to befriend Hank and he eventually becomes a member their extended “family” joining in meals and holidays with others from the neighborhood and the Butterfields’ church.
Then one day the DEA and police show up at Hank’s house. It seems that Hank had a meth lab in his basement. Hank is taken off to jail. Butterfield recounts how she and her family continue to practice hospitality with their incarcerated friend. There are things in this book that we in prison ministry could benefit from reading. But in this devotional, I want to focus on Butterfield’s story of ministering to Aimee. Aimee was Hank’s girlfriend who was arrested at the same time as Hank. Here are selected quotes from the chapter “Walking the Emmaus Road.”
“Hank wrote: ‘Rosaria, will you write Aimee? She has no one. This was all my fault.’
“Aimee asked for Bible. I sent a large-print women’s devotional Bible the next day.
“Aimee told me that she loved her new Bible. And the simple promises of the Bible, written in the first pages, the words of Jesus’s love and faithfulness, caused her heart to ask: Could Jesus be my Shepherd too?”
[Butterfield wrote to Aimee regularly for months with words of encouragement, always pointing her to Jesus].
“I have a letter from Aimee on my desk that I hope to answer this week. The letter is hopeful. In it she writes: ‘I have been here almost a year now. I was thinking about you. So, I think I am doing okay for being here so long. God bless you, my friend.”
[Before Butterfield could answer that letter, she got another one from Aimee telling her she’d accepted a plea and would be serving 10 years. She wrote:]
“I know ten years is long, but this is God’s will. I have a lot more in my life now than I have ever had: I have sobriety, faith, salvation, and hope in God.
“Aimee taught me that we put the hand of the hurting into the hand of the Savior when we walk the Emmaus road with them. And that is the heart of the gospel.
“Aimee’s situation reminds me of Psalm 147:2-4:
“The LORD builds up Jerusalem, he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names.
“The God who names and numbers the stars holds in his scarred hands the shards of your broken heart. Of this I am sure.”
Butterfield couldn’t go and see Aimee in jail, but she was able to walk with her through writing letters. She walked with her and she pointed her to Jesus. In that way she was able to put Aimee’s hands into the hands of the Savior. That is something that we can do when we write to our mentees and use that opportunity to remind them that the Lord will heal their broken hearts and bind up their wounds.
Much love, Barry