Setting Prisoners Free

A few years ago, a good friend of mine introduced me to this amazing short film called "The Butterfly Circus" A guy named Mr Mendez was traveling through the desert with a bunch of friends. They see a carnival, so they stop to check it out. This carnival has what's called a "freak show" , a sideshow, where they stare and laugh at a few people who are different.  Finally, they come to the final curtain and the announcer, the carnival ringmaster, cries out:  "And now, a perversion of nature. Cursed from birth. A man, if you can call him that, whom God Himself has turned His back upon. I give you.... the limbless man!" He pulls back the curtain and there stands a young man without limbs. His name is Will ; he was born with no arms and no legs. The small crowd looks shocked, groans and even laughs at him. As they disappear, two young boys remain and pull tomatoes out of their pockets. One of these kids throws one at this defenseless limbles...

Cornerstone Community Outreach is a homeless shelter, and it is a very eclectic, busy, hectic and chaotic place! It is raw and we live in the trenches; but we aim to be a place where the disenfranchised, lonely, rejected, forgotten and those who've lost hope will find acceptance, friendship, hope, love and a home with us!  We have a number of different facilities and programs, where we serve just about every population in modern-day America. It doesn't matter what race, gender, age or sexual preference someone is, we'll take them in, give them a bed, and without bias, we'll offer whatever services we can. This wide range of folks often includes well over 500 people, who we house, feed and outreach daily. In our cafeteria, all these programs meet and we see hundreds of people come together for nutritious meals, and this is where we see all the eclectic beauty of CCO and Uptown.  By gazing over the cafeteria, we see a newly homeless single father with...

I want to look at Grace through the eyes of one of God's prophets; this prophet knew about His grace, he enjoyed it, hated it, loved it, struggled with it and even became angry over it. This prophet's name was Jonah. God had seen the state of the city Nineveh, it was troubling Him, so He went to Jonah and told him to go to this wicked city and preach. Jonah doesn't say anything, he just gets up and takes off in the opposite direction. He was so opposed to God's idea, he pays money, jumps on a ship, heading as far away as he can from where God wants him to go.  While on that ship, a vicious terrifying storm starts! Everyone on it knows it came from something supernatural. They were all in grave danger and the ship was about to tear apart. Meanwhile, Jonah, in his efforts to escape from the presence of God, and in his efforts to escape from the instructions God had given him, had gone into the belly of the ship and fallen asleep. God had stressed him ou...

When I first came to Chicago about 18 years ago, I got to know this chronically homeless couple who lived in Uptown. At that time, I was helping run a soup kitchen, so every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, this fragile couple would stumble into our cafeteria and eat. They would occasionally sleep at Cornerstone, but most of the time, you'd find them sleeping outside in various uninhabitable places; you could find them either in the park, in abandoned buildings, under a local viaduct or, if it was really cold, I'd find them sleeping in the entrance way of our building. This couple was out there! They were out there bad! It's hard to describe what I saw every time I bumped into them. They were normally drunk and high, hunched over and looking very sickly. Barely able to move; they would shuffle along with their shopping cart, assisting each other. Due to the harsh reality of their lifestyles, addictions and homelessness, they would rotate in and out of jail,...