Suffering & Hardship
Someone I love is in prison. I am carrying the shame and the missing of them and I cannot talk to anyone about it.
“And Joseph's master took him, and put him into the prison, a place where the king's prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison. But the LORD was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison.”
Joseph is thrown into prison on a false accusation, and the narrator's only comment is that the LORD was with him there. The text does not claim the prison was good, or brief, or deserved. It says that God's presence went into the cell with him, which is the detail that matters most to anyone whose person is behind a door they cannot open.
“Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.”
The instruction is to remember those in bonds as though bound with them. The writer addresses a church where imprisonment was a live risk for any of them, so this is not charity extended toward strangers. It is written to people who knew the shame and the fear firsthand, and it treats staying connected to a prisoner as a Christian duty rather than an embarrassment.
A path forward
Write or visit on a fixed schedule rather than when you can face it. Regular contact is easier to sustain than intense contact, and it matters far more to them.
Find one person or a prison families group where you can say this out loud. Over time the isolation usually does more damage to you than the sentence itself.
Pray for them by name with someone else, even a single trusted friend. The shame survives on being the only one who ever says their name.
Closing verse
“Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
- Matthew 25:36
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