How to Gain Peace for Your Life

DIGGING DEEPER         01/19/2015   How to Gain Peace for Your Life             Musician Chris Tomlin shares about connecting with God   Excerpt from Go Small By: Craig Gross I grew up in California, where you pretty much have to drive wherever you want to go, and since I still live here, I don’t know a whole lot about mass transportation in more compact cities like New York City, Boston, or Chicago.     But I do know about a man named Clive Jacobsen, and I also know a little bit about how he uses his time on a train that runs from his house in Sydney, Australia, to a town called Shellharbour. Every Sunday, Clive Jacobsen gets on the train with a leather duffel bag, finds a comfortable seat, and settles in for the four-hour journey. He isn’t going to pass the time looking at the scenery out the window, though. Nor will he strike up any conversations with his fellow passengers, read the latest paperback thriller, or scroll through his Twitter feed on a smartphone. Clive Jacobsen will unzip his duffel bag, get out a notepad and a pen, and start writing letters.     The letters he writes will eventually find their way to distant countries like Zambia, South Africa, or Thailand. Clive Jacobsen is writing to international prisoners. Criminals. He writes to inmates because he was one once. Long ago. Back in the mid-1960s, Clive Jacobsen spent a small amount of time in jail for a relatively minor offense, but he’s never forgotten the sense of isolation and abandonment he felt while he was there. So it seemed only natural that when a letter-writing organization contacted him in 2002 about sending letters to inmates abroad, he seized the opportunity right away.     The organization told him he could write to more than one inmate if he liked, so he decided to write to three. As his correspondence went on and he began to develop relationships—however distant—with these men, he began to not only see the massive need for this type of pen pal, but also find some personal fulfillment through it. So he upped it to four. Then ten. Then twenty. Then a hundred.       no one is beyond redemption         At last count, Clive Jacobsen now maintains written correspondence with more than 550 prisoners abroad. That is a lot of time on the train. Clive not only sacrifices his time and invites the pain of inevitable hand cramps from handwriting all those letters; he also sacrifices his money. According to Clive, he can spend as much as $200 every month on postage alone, in addition to all the other supplies he uses to organize his correspondence.     This guy is an amazing example for all of us, because he’s just doing what God put in front of him. He saw an opportunity to reach out to some of the most marginalized and isolated people in the world and shine a light on them to let them know that no matter what they’ve done, Jesus still loves them and somebody sees them. Clive Jacobsen understands this about them, and his heart goes out to them. In his words, “They can’t undo the crime they’ve done . . . but no one is beyond redemption.”     And if you think what Clive Jacobsen is doing does nothing for him, then I would suggest you haven’t thought through this very much. I would imagine that something as small and simple as writing letters to these inmates helps Clive Jacobsen understand his own need for redemption—and reinforces to him how much Jesus has done for him. He isn’t trying to change the world. He’s just trying to bring a little peace into these men’s lives, and in so doing, he brings some peace into his own. And he does it by thinking small. Go big or go home? That’s a false choice. I encourage you to pull a Clive Jacobsen and go small.       By Craig Gross         K-LOVE - 5700 West Oaks Blvd. Rocklin, CA 95765 - (800) 525-LOVE (5683)     FACEBOOK     TWITTER     YOUTUBE     LISTEN ONLINE     FAQS       We hope you found this message to be useful. This email was sent as part of your membership at Educational Media Foundation, the parent company of K-LOVE Radio. Your email address is not sold to or shared with a third party. We sometimes use third parties to fulfill services for us, like email sending or music survey tests. In those cases they will have access to your information for the strict purpose of fulfilling their tasks. 5700 West Oaks Blvd., Rocklin, CA 95765 This email was sent to you at: lisatim93.labellabling@blogger.com Click here if you wish to Unsubscribe or click here to Edit your profile.

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