Irina Ratushinskaya was a Soviet dissident who was sent to the Gulag back in the 1980s. Her poetry got her arrested. Can you imagine that? While in prison, she wrote poems on bars of soap so she could quickly wash them away. She also memorized the lines to write down on cigarette papers later. She dared to believe,and somehow the strength of her poetic faith became her undoing. Her case drew global attention. In the prayer force I helped lead back then, we featured her, and people prayed for her. We went to Washington to advocate for her and other religious prisoners. In those days, both sides of the aisle could mostly agree that international religious liberty was a good thing. During the Reagan administration, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, she was released. She lived in the U.S. for a time, then England and eventually returned to Russia, where she died of cancer July 15, 2017.

I came across this paragraph she wrote about her prison experience:
You must not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to hate. Not because your tormentors have not earned it. But if you allow hatred to take root, it would flourish and spread during your years in the camps, driving out everything else, and ultimately corrode and warp your soul. You will no longer be yourself, your identity will be destroyed, all that will remain will be a hysterical, maddened and bedeviled husk of the human being that once was.

Alexei Navalny’s Prison Exercise
The one-year anniversary of Alexey Navalny’s (a Russian anti-corruption activist) death was covered recently in a BBC news program. The camera followed his mother and father to the gravestone. The reporter said it was brave for the people who went to the grave to simply show up with the NSB/KGB watching. The crowd broke into spontaneous chants of thanks in Russian.

This excerpt from Navalny's prison memoir strikes a chord:
I have always thought, and said openly, that being a believer makes it easier to live your life and, to an even greater extent, engage in opposition politics. Faith makes life simpler.

The initial position for this exercise is the same as for the previous one. You lie in your bunk looking up at the one above and ask yourself whether you are a Christian in your heart of hearts. It is not essential for you to believe some old guys in the desert once lived to be eight hundred years old, or that the sea was literally parted in front of someone. But are you a disciple of the religion whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the price for their sins? Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? If you can honestly answer yes, what is there left for you to worry about? Why, under your breath, would you mumble a hundred times something you read from a hefty tome you keep in your bedside table? Don’t worry about the morrow, because the morrow is perfectly capable of taking care of itself.

My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. They won’t let me down and will sort out all my headaches. As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me.

The Apostle Pavel's (Paul's) Last Words in Scripture
As I think of persecuted Christians around the world these days, I do think more than ever of Paul’s times in prisons. How he suffered, served and wrote from his time in chains. Our evening series in 2 Timothy ended last Sunday, and Felipe Chamy pointed out that these are the last words in Scripture from Paul.

Do your best to come to me soon. For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry. Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message. At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus remained at Corinth, and I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus. Do your best to come before winter. Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers.

The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you. (2 Timothy 4:9-22)

As Irina, Alexei and Pavel demonstrate, our fellowship with one another--in, out and beyond trials, prisons,death and life--forms an underappreciated hallmark of our walk with Jesus. May each of us walk in truth together and love one another today and always.