Maya Moore Irons’s career speaks for itself. As a multi-time champion and all-star for the NCAA and WNBA and an Olympic gold medalist, she achieved almost every success possible in the sport. Yet she shocked the sports world when she left the basketball court at the height of her game—leaving one kind of court for another.
Years earlier, she met Jonathan Irons, a man who was sitting in a jail cell hundreds of miles away and didn’t deserve to be there in the first place. God planted the seed of justice within her after that first encounter with Irons. And the way God unfolded that story is truly one for the record books. Join us as we hear how Moore’s faith remained her constant strength throughout her career and in her fight for social justice reform within the criminal prosecution system.
Guest Bio:
Moore is a basketball icon. Irons was just 18 years old when he was wrongly convicted by an all-white jury for a crime that occurred when he was 16. With no physical evidence tying him to the crime, Irons was handed a 50-year prison sentence, of which he served 23 years. It might seem unlikely that their paths would cross.
Yet right before her freshman year at University of Connecticut (UCONN), Moore was introduced to Irons by her family involved with prison ministry and heard his story. Over the next decade, as she graduated from UCONN and was drafted into the WNBA, Irons earned his GED and developed a deep understanding of law. Moore and Irons forged a close friendship, grounded in their shared faith and cultivated through their dedication to finding his freedom. Then, in 2019, at the peak of her career, Moore shocked the world when she decided to step away from basketball to focus solely on Irons’s case.
Notes & Quotes:
- “I was like, ‘Oh, this is … I’m more like Jesus than I’ve ever been in my life.’ And I wasn’t just like, ‘I’m going to be Jesus in this picture.’ Like, we’re all helping each other, but I’m getting a chance to relate to the Gospels and relate to some of these things I’m seeing in Scripture because I need [Jesus]. Because I am seeing this oppression.”
- “I don’t know what’s going to happen necessarily, what’s next to do, but I know [God] is going to provide. He’s going to show up every season, every year. You get heartbreak, but then he’d show us something, and then, hold on, nothing’s happening, and then something, and then he would just keep us going. He’d show himself really undeniably in different ways where it was like, ‘We’re on the right track.’”
- “The goodness of God and the goodness of this story is what’s going to win.”
- “God’s heart is about justice and mercy and dignity and caring for the vulnerable … this is what the kingdom of God looks like at its purest.”
Links Mentioned:
- FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
- Learn more about Maya’s work with Win with Justice.
- Check out Maya and Jonathan’s book, Love and Justice.
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Verses Mentioned:
- Colossians 3:23
- Esther 4:14
The Where Ya From? Podcast is presented by the Voices Collection, a part of Our Daily Bread Ministries, in partnership with Christianity Today.
