“Pride always means enmity — it is enmity.
And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.”
~ C.S. Lewis ~

Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship and Breakpoint has been in the news recently – since his hospitalization for an intracerebral blood clot. Last Thursday, Rich Lowry offered a short tribute to Colson in the New York Post: “A Nixonite Redeemed.”

In contemporary America, redemption begins sometime between the first check-in into rehab and the first cable-TV interview, and reaches completion when everyone gets distracted by someone else’s attention-grabbing disgrace.

 
In stark contrast to highly publicized foibles of so many Hollywood celebrities and other public figures, the life of Chuck Colson has been an example of true redemption; from Nixon’s “Hatchetman” to a Centurion for Christ.
 
Sentenced to prison for his role in Watergate;

…Colson was forced, as he told James Rosen of Fox News a few years ago, to see “the world through the eyes of people who were disadvantaged and marginalized and rejected, the outcasts in society, the untouchables in American life.”
 
Although in prison less than a year, he never quite left. He started his group Prison Fellowship, which is now active in most American prisons, running Bible studies, sponsoring pen pals and providing gifts to the children of inmates.
 
A devotee of the great English reformer and abolitionist William Wilberforce, Colson is one of the nation’s foremost voices for checking the excesses of America’s prison-industrial complex. He long ago came full circle from the enforcer of a “law and order” administration to an advocate of mercy and restraint…
 
…What seemed to be Colson’s fall from grace in the mid-1970s was really the opposite. It was the first step on an ascension to true courage and service.
 
His life is a testament to how redemption, so often debased and abused in a 24/7 news cycle obsessed with celebrity and scandal, can be astonishingly powerful and real.

 
Colson’s personal redemption has resulted in the transformation of thousands of lives for Christ. Through God’s grace, may it continue to transform many more.
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Related:
Chuck Colson Still in Intensive Care Unit After Brain Surgery. ~ @ the Christian Post
Updates on Colson’s health from the Colson Center ~ Includes a message center to submit thoughts and prayers of support.