The Forgiveness of Sins

Dear Friends in Christ:

The Season of Lent is a time for repentance as we take our sins to the Cross and pray: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner!”

The following is a powerful true story from a Lenten booklet of meditations titled, “Different Shoes a Common Path”, published by Forward Movement, an agency of the Episcopal Church.

The Story…

Matthew B. Harper was arrested for murder, tried, and convicted in 1999. He is now serving two concurrent sentences, a thirty-five year sentence for murder and a twenty-year sentence for arson, at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia. With good behavior, he will be eligible for parole in 2029. Of his crime,
Matthew writes:

I am in prison for murdering my older sister, Anne Elizabeth, and for the fire that followed the murder. At the time I was eighteen and she was twenty. The circumstances of the crime are complicated and ugly; they always are. We were very close—you can only truly fight and argue with those you love very deeply. Lent 2008 will mark my ninth year in prison. I was free for three years after Anne’s death before I was arrested. During those three years I returned to college and tried to return to the church (God and I had some serious issues). I also tried to hide from what I had done.

When I was arrested, I pleaded guilty. At the time I was a senior in college, engaged to an amazing woman, and we were expecting a child. All that is gone now, and I do not blame her for her decisions in the face of such a deep betrayal about who I was. The nine years since have marked for me a long passage and struggle of faith and selfdiscovery. There are many good priests, psychologists, and lay people who have helped me become the man I am today.

I grew up in the church and once was a good young man, on a good path, willing to be used by God. It took me many years to become something else and many more to recover from that. What I did nine years ago is a fundamental part of who I am today. Not a day passes that I do not think of Anne or my crime against her and all who loved her. I can only do good with what is left to me. I work for the chaplain here in prison and am a leader and director of the Kairos community here. I have completed my undergraduate work and am working on an M.A. in Christian Theology. This Lent I shall be thirty-one years old. I will be fifty-two when I am released, but God has not wasted the past nine years. I do not believe the next twenty-one will be wasted either.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner!”

—Pastor David Fetter