Here's an exciting story from the Beacon News, a suburban Chicago newspaper, which focuses on a dear friend, Tom Beatty. It's encouraging reading.Repent is one of those words that stirs up images of a Baptist preacher slamming his worn leather bible down on the podium while shouting out condemnations to the congregation. It implies wrongdoing, makes us feel guilty.
But repent doesn't mean the same thing to Tom Beatty, the newly appointed director of New Life Corrections Ministry, a division of Wayside Cross Ministries in Aurora. "Repent means change," he says. And change is something Beatty is familiar with.
"I was a drug addict and a drunk and in and out of so many jails, I couldn't count," says Beatty. "I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I did it anyway."
All that stopped one winter evening back in 1979, Beatty says, when he asked Jesus Christ into his life while an inmate in a Nebraska county jail. "There weren't any bells or whistles," he says with a chuckle. "But when I woke the next morning I knew I was different..."And just how different I could describe in a hundred stories from my personal interaction with Tom over the last couple of decades. But for now, why not finish reading the rest of the Beacon News report, including as it does details on Tom's current ministry with New Life Corrections Ministry in Aurora, Illinois. It's right here.
