Dear Editor,
There is so much talk about life sentence these days, what with the sentencing of popular dancehall artiste Vybz Kartel recently. I too have been handed a life sentence, but one of a different kind.
While we are led to believe that the prisons established by man incarcerate us, man is in a prison of a greater kind. Mankind is really in a prison of death, every last one of us.
Okay, you may not agree with me, so let me tell you about my own experience.
I was born a prisoner of death on death row. All my living was a living totally of death, earning the wages of death. Then one day something happened and I escaped the clutches of death and I was given a life sentence instead. I still could not avoid the death that was all around me; this death in which I lived daily, though I was no longer on death row.
I did set out to find how I could escape the state of death that still plagued me. But after 20 years of much struggles, much unanswered questions, much despair, I have passed from death and now fully into my life sentence.
I have been saved by grace, having no righteousness of my own, but clothed in God's righteousness alone. I stand in the fact that I now know that I am a child of God on life sentence. To be a child of God is not to enter into any system of religion (call it what you may). Nor is it to join a company of religious people whom you may call the Lord's people. It is certainly not joining 'the church'— whatever names they may go by.
To be a child of God is to receive into the centre of your being, at your very core, a gift of God called life. A life which by nature we do not possess, a life which is God's own life.
This is my life sentence. Hallelujah! How can I neglect so great a salvation.
Mr Palmer, you can experience this life sentence too, in the very midst of your incarceration. I am willing to share how with you.
Millicent Battick
sbat65@gmail.com
My life sentence vs Kartel's
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There is so much talk about life sentence these days, what with the sentencing of popular dancehall artiste Vybz Kartel recently. I too have been handed a life sentence, but one of a different kind.
While we are led to believe that the prisons established by man incarcerate us, man is in a prison of a greater kind. Mankind is really in a prison of death, every last one of us.
Okay, you may not agree with me, so let me tell you about my own experience.
I was born a prisoner of death on death row. All my living was a living totally of death, earning the wages of death. Then one day something happened and I escaped the clutches of death and I was given a life sentence instead. I still could not avoid the death that was all around me; this death in which I lived daily, though I was no longer on death row.
I did set out to find how I could escape the state of death that still plagued me. But after 20 years of much struggles, much unanswered questions, much despair, I have passed from death and now fully into my life sentence.
I have been saved by grace, having no righteousness of my own, but clothed in God's righteousness alone. I stand in the fact that I now know that I am a child of God on life sentence. To be a child of God is not to enter into any system of religion (call it what you may). Nor is it to join a company of religious people whom you may call the Lord's people. It is certainly not joining 'the church'— whatever names they may go by.
To be a child of God is to receive into the centre of your being, at your very core, a gift of God called life. A life which by nature we do not possess, a life which is God's own life.
This is my life sentence. Hallelujah! How can I neglect so great a salvation.
Mr Palmer, you can experience this life sentence too, in the very midst of your incarceration. I am willing to share how with you.
Millicent Battick
sbat65@gmail.com
My life sentence vs Kartel's
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