<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Long Mercy Project]]></title><description><![CDATA[Seeing every person through the lens of the cross.]]></description><link>https://www.longmercy.org/blog</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 23 Sep 2026 06:35:31 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://www.longmercy.org/blog-feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title><![CDATA[Saturday Morning Traditions]]></title><description><![CDATA[Most mornings begin the same way. A cup of coffee on the back porch as the sun begins to rise. There was a time, though, when Saturday mornings looked a little different. When my daughter and two sons were little, we'd often begin the day by heading to Shipley's Donuts. Everyone had their favorite, packed in their own little bag, along with a carton of chocolate milk. Before the day became busy, we'd gather around the table, laugh, talk, and simply enjoy being together. Those mornings are...]]></description><link>https://www.longmercy.org/post/saturday-morning-traditions</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a8c6f0591ea1d0846e20266</guid><pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 16:22:13 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Stephen Jernigan</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[No Fix Needed, Or Wanted - What Prison Taught Me About Simply Showing Up]]></title><description><![CDATA[For a long time, I thought ministry meant improvement. Not in a crude way. I didn’t walk into rooms thinking I was better than anyone else. But I did carry a quiet assumption: if I showed up, something should get better. Pain should lessen. Understanding should increase. Change should follow. I didn’t call it fixing. I called it helping. That instinct followed me everywhere—into churches, into prison units, across borders on the World Race. Different contexts, same reflex. Listen closely...]]></description><link>https://www.longmercy.org/post/no-fix-needed-or-wanted-what-prison-taught-me-about-simply-showing-up</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a7a83dbecb2cb929ff84607</guid><pubDate>Tue, 11 Aug 2026 02:08:48 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Stephen Jernigan</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Faith That Stays – Reflections From Prison]]></title><description><![CDATA[Most of us don’t realize how much of our faith is built around improvement. We trust God, but we expect movement. We pray, but we assume direction. Even when we talk about endurance or suffering, there’s usually an unspoken horizon—eventually this will change. Eventually doors will open. Eventually relief will come. Hope, as we tend to practice it, almost always includes an exit. I didn’t recognize how deeply that assumption shaped me until I started spending time with people who didn’t have...]]></description><link>https://www.longmercy.org/post/faith-that-stays-reflections-from-prison</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a77ff207e238b0b8ae2369d</guid><pubDate>Sun, 09 Aug 2026 04:17:28 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Stephen Jernigan</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Weight of Being Known — Reflections from Prison]]></title><description><![CDATA[There is a kind of invisibility that doesn’t come from being ignored. It comes from being seen only as a category. In prison, men are counted constantly. Their movements are tracked. Their names are written down, called out, logged. And yet many of them live with a deep sense of not being known at all. They are visible, but not recognized. I didn’t understand that distinction until I started noticing how much weight even small moments of attention seemed to carry. A name remembered.A question...]]></description><link>https://www.longmercy.org/post/the-weight-of-being-known-reflections-from-prison</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a77fada2dc76a37da42d1fc</guid><pubDate>Sun, 09 Aug 2026 03:59:51 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Stephen Jernigan</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[What Prison Taught Me About Simply Showing Up]]></title><description><![CDATA[For a long time, I thought ministry meant improvement. Not in a crude way. I didn’t walk into rooms thinking I was better than anyone else. But I did carry a quiet assumption: if I showed up, something should get better. Pain should lessen. Understanding should increase. Change should follow. I didn’t call it fixing. I called it helping. That instinct followed me everywhere—into churches, into prison units, across borders on the World Race. Different contexts, same reflex. Listen closely...]]></description><link>https://www.longmercy.org/post/what-prison-taught-me-about-simply-showing-up</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a77f9af2dc76a37da42cfcd</guid><pubDate>Sun, 09 Aug 2026 03:54:40 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Stephen Jernigan</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Judging From a Distance: What Prison Taught Me About People]]></title><description><![CDATA[It’s harder to keep people at a distance once you know their names. That may sound obvious, but it took me longer than I’d like to admit to learn it. For a long time, I was comfortable holding people at arm’s length—not in cruelty, but in abstraction. Distance makes things simpler. It keeps the possibility of getting hurt at a minimum.  It allows for categories. It lets us decide who belongs where without having to listen too closely. Before I spent time inside prison, the men there were...]]></description><link>https://www.longmercy.org/post/judging-from-a-distance-what-prison-taught-me-about-people</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a77f34d2dc76a37da42c3d0</guid><pubDate>Sun, 09 Aug 2026 03:30:57 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Stephen Jernigan</dc:creator></item><item><title><![CDATA[Judging From a Distance: Time Spent Inside a Penitentiary ]]></title><description><![CDATA[The first thing that unsettled me about prison wasn’t the bars or the gates. It was the kindness. I wasn’t prepared for it. I had walked in carrying all the images I’d absorbed from movies and television—gray walls, hard men, constant threat. What I found instead were handshakes, polite conversation, men asking how my family was doing, and genuine concern for one another. That moment stayed with me, because it didn’t fit the story I thought I already knew. For most of my life, I thought I...]]></description><link>https://www.longmercy.org/post/judging-from-a-distance-time-spent-inside-a-penitentiary</link><guid isPermaLink="false">6a76577a7e238b0b8ade882f</guid><pubDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2026 22:09:07 GMT</pubDate><dc:creator>Stephen Jernigan</dc:creator></item></channel></rss>