Note: My wife Jan, and daughter Lindy visit the Deer Park Women’s Prison in Melbourne every week to conduct ‘Christian Discussion Groups’, craft classes etc. Lindy is the Prison Network Ministries’ coordinator of volunteers, and does this ministry virtually full-time. On the Sunday before Christmas, 2001, we ran a ‘Church Service’ for the various wings of the prison. Another of our daughters, Amanda, whose full-time ministry is as a counselor with young post-release female offenders, was also part of the singing group that day. This is the hardest talk I’ve had to prepare for any group all year!

Rowland Croucher.

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Hi. Happy Christmas, Thanks ladies for the welcome you give my wife Jan and daughter Lindy when they visit here each week. The pretty girl over there with black curly hair is another daughter of mine. You probably wonder how I got such good-looking kids: well, ‘cos you know my wife you know how 🙂 Jan and Lindy love coming here each week; they love you; and I sense that feeling goes both ways.

It’s Christmas – the saddest time of the year for some; and happiest for others. Some of you will see your kids a little longer and that will be special. Others will miss them, and that’s hard.

What’s Christmas for? Christmas is about many things, but really it’s about people’s problems.

My job is to talk to people about their problems. I try to help them work on their problems – and sometimes we solve their problems together. Once a month I talk to a ‘shrink’, a psychiatrist, about my problems. We go for a hour’s walk and talk about anything that’s bothering me. It’s one of the best hours in my month!

Everyone’s got problems. The newspapers are full of the Australian Governor-General’s problems. He’s supposed to be the number one most powerful person in our nation, in theory, and he’s got big problems at the moment – from when we was Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane. Once he asked me to go to Brisbane to talk to his priests. Guess what we talked about – you got it: their problems! And I talked privately with the Archbishop about some of his problems.

Everyone’s got problems.

I remember a girl of about 18 who had massive problems. She was the angriest person I’ve ever met. She’d been kicked out of every school she’d ever attended, and the Victorian Government had to pay a six-figure sum for people to be with her all the time to stop her going crazy. Her social worker asked me to see her, because she’d never been able to talk to a man without getting mad. We used to go for walks, the three of us – the social worker, and ‘Jane’ and me. It took her a long time to trust me to go for a walk with her but without the social worker. She had a big black dog, and we walked the nature trails near our place and slowly she got more confidence talking about herself.

‘Jane’, I asked, ‘what do you want to do with your life?’ ‘Oh, kill a couple of people!’ ‘Uh-huh, anything else?’ ‘Yeah, blow up the Department of Community Services Victoria.’ ‘Uh-huh, anything else?’ ‘Yeah, I’d like to die and come back as a kitten – but it has to be a female kitten.’

One day I asked her, ‘If we met Jesus coming around this track, what would you say to him?’ Quick as a flash she said, ‘I’d make sure my dog was close to me, and I’d ask him if he was a pig like every other man I’ve met until now!’

Some time later, in the early hours of some mornings, she watched the Jesus video a few times. She told me she decided to sign on the line about wanting to know Jesus more, and to ask him to come into her life to help her sort out her problems.

Last Friday night I talked to Jane on the phone. She’s now about 25, and she’s still working through some of her problems. But now Jesus is with her, helping her.

Christmas is all about God who runs the whole universe, but who loves each of us and came here to this sad world about 2000 Christmases ago to help us with our problems. Jesus was born in a smelly cave where they kept animals. Mothers and babies die when they give birth in those sorts of places. Once when I visited a remote village in the Philippines, the women there told me each of them had lost at least one baby who’d died… Today, around the world, 24,000 poor people – mostly children – will die from hunger and germs…

So what’s God doing about our problems?

He comes to each of us to share our problems.

But you might be thinking, I’ve never seen Jesus or God. Guess what: you have. He works through the people who come here every week to visit. They love you. Jesus loves you! Yes, you! Jesus is in every act of kindness: in the love you mothers have for your children; when one of the guards here treats you with respect.

‘Jane’ used to say: ‘I’m a problem!’ ‘No you’re not a problem’ I’d say. ‘You’ve got problems, I’ve got problems, everyone’s got problems, but you yourself are not a problem.’ ‘You _have_ some problems, but you as a person are not a problem.’

‘God doesn’t say: there’s Jane down there with big problems. I don’t love her as much. In fact Jesus loved people with big problems, and got mad with people who thought they had no problems. To one woman with BIG problems he said “I do not condemn you!” The authorities had condemned her, but Jesus didn’t, because he read her heart. He knew her past, and he knew her pain…’

‘Jane, God does not measure your worth by your problems, but by who you are. And you are special to God. God loves you before you fix your problems, while you solve your problems, when you’ve solved your problems, and whether or not you’ve worked on your problems…’

That’s what Christmas is all about, Jane….

I’d like to talk to Jesus about that… and you can listen if you want to…

[Prayer]

Rowland Croucher 23rd December 2001.

http://jmm.aaa.net.au