Two years ago during March I was about to begin a worship service at the Northwest Arkansas Women's Community Correctional Center, in Fayetteville, when a woman came up to me and spoke with deep sighs and tears.
She was "out of character" from my past experiences with her. She told me she had received some very disappointing family news. She said she felt like something had died inside her and the prison was her tomb.
For several days I reflected on our conversation. During my next visit I told the women a true Easter Egg Story.
One Easter morning a Christian education director had all the children's classes decorate plastic Easter eggs and make paper baskets. They needed the baskets to remind them to carry around their Easter eggs in their hearts every day of the year.
At the end of each class there was a show and tell time. In one class there was a special needs boy that just kept opening and closing his egg and putting it in the basket and then repeating the sequence. When it was his turn to speak he stood up, separated the two parts of the egg and said: "The tomb is empty. Jesus is alive."
Some of the inmates wiped away tears. I quietly asked them if they wanted to talk about their Easter Egg Tomb times and what they experienced at the prison. The woman I had been talking to during my March visit stood and with a strong voice said that this prison was her tomb, her Easter Egg, but that she needed the time inside her tomb and to her surprise, Jesus was alive, even in her tomb, but, that week the door would be opened for her to leave and begin a new life outside in the other world where she had once lived.
She knew she had to die to some destructive temptations and she knew she could do it with Jesus by her side.
At the conclusion of the service that night we said prayers over her and another woman who was going to leave the prison after having completed her sentence.
A portion of that blessing is, "You have been brought here to this place for an opportunity to change. It has not been an easy journey and you have had to face many challenges. You have forged new friendships and a new way to live. Be strong and be filled with the hope God desires to give to you. Pray for us because we will be praying for you."
Easter is not just one day; it is a way to live every day. We all have experienced self-made prisons. But, we also can carry with us an Easter Egg in our baskets in our hearts and as a constant reminder that Christ is alive not just on one morning of the year. Easter is a way to live every day all year long.
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Parks is the former rector of St. Theodore Episcopal Church in Bella Vista. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
Religion on 04/15/2015