This is a reminder that one of our Christmas appeals is for Ray Meeks, who joined this church from death row in 1979. Please contribute by making a payment, however you do UCG payments, with a note directing your gift to the Ray Meeks Christmas fund. You can contribute online here. Ray relies on our gifts for snacks, shoes, pajamas, sweatshirts, toiletries and the use of his tablet for mail, music, and movies.

On death row since he was 21 years old, Ray has had two death warrants signed only to be saved by last-minute stays of execution. He was once put in solitary for giving me a Christmas card he had drawn for me.  He suffered heat stroke after his cell reached 118 degrees. After each of these Ray always tells me, “You gotta have hope. Otherwise, you have nothing.”

About 5 years ago, after numerous appeals, the courts vacated Ray’s death sentence and gave him life in prison without possibility of parole, contingent upon his filing no more appeals. He agreed, and he has been in three new prisons since then.

He has seen hopes happening. He is able to walk freely around the campus of his current prison. His cell is open all day. He takes courses, goes to the prison library, attends worship in the chapel, and especially comforting for him, he gets his food directly at the prison cafeteria rather than wait for it to be delivered to him, usually cold, on a prison cart to be consumed alone in his 6×9 death row cell.

At the same time, he has a degenerative disc condition and has to use a walker. Yet through each struggle, he maintains hope.

One of the things I wait for each Advent season is a rebirth of hope, a light that shines in the darkness, a light that the darkness can never overcome. I wait, I trust, and I hope. Thanks Ray.