Last Friday, one of the program officers at the Wright County Jail stuck his head in a room where inmates were working on transition matters and asked, “Anyone here want to see the chaplain?” Soon a young man named Ron L came into the chaplain’s room and looked at me as if I were from […]
I met with Crystal on Thursday at the Wright County Jail. I’ve written about her before as one of the inmates I visit as a chaplain, and about how she has learned more about who Jesus is, why He came to earth, and what her relationship to Him should be than would ever be possible […]
On October 25 of this year, Bryan accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord and changed his addictions. Previously, he had been addicted to meth. Now he’s addicted to Jesus. Of all the inmates I’ve met with, he understands most clearly that you can’t just give up taking dope and get on with your […]
One day in late November of this year, when the temperature outside was more like September, I met with Crystal for the third time. Her story sounded like something out of a Greek tragedy – molested, raped, battered, meth addict, children taken away, a series of bad relationships, and fearful of what would happen next. […]
Jacob was wasted on drugs and alcohol when he came to visit his mother at her home two years ago in September. She didn’t answer the door, so he let himself in. He found her in bed and started talking to her about all his troubles. She didn’t hear a word he said. He got […]
Within the last two months, in my role as a chaplain at the Wright County Jail, I have met several times with three inmates – with Jacob, with Crystal, and with Bryan. All three were self-declared shipwrecks when I first met them. They were not godless people. They had asked Jesus to rebuild their ships […]
LIFE—THE TEMPTATION is always to reduce it to size. A bowl of cherries. A rat race. Amino acids. Even to call it a mystery smacks of reductionism. It is the mystery. As far as anybody seems to know, the vast majority of things in the universe do not have whatever life is. Sticks, stones, stars, space—they […]
“Do you know Me?” says the Lord. “Do you really know Me – in an intimate way? Not as a thought in your mind but as a presence in your innermost being, in the place you call ‘me.’ Do you know Me there? “Do you see Me in every nook and cranny? Do you hear […]
At about 2:30 a.m. on June 1, 2016, Shawn Tyler Benson shot Cheyenne Clough in the back of the head with a pearl-handled 22 pistol, as she lay wounded on the ground in a park south of Buffalo. As depraved as he was then, he is redeemed now, saved in the Wright County Jail when […]
Shawn Tyler Benson was transferred from the Minnesota Correctional facility in St. Cloud, where all Minnesota prisoners start their sentences, to the facility in Stillwater, Minnesota, on July 24th, the very day a correctional officer was murdered there. All Shawn’s belongings, including his Bible, were put in a red box in St. Cloud to be […]