New Year Letters

Goal #1: Write Letters

One of my New Year's resolutions is to write more letters. Don't you just love getting letters? Now, don't get me wrong - I love instantaneous emails, blogs and phone calls, but a letter...someone went to the effort to write a LETTER...to me! It can just make some one's day (or it does mine, anyhow)! I read where Julia Roberts said that having a child made her a better child - that if her daughter didn't call for two weeks she would be devastated. That made sense to me. Now, I am not a parent (other than to our Black Lab), but if I came home from work and Boone didn't know me - why, it would break my heart!

In 2 Corinthians 3 it says "Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? or do we need, like some people letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on your hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on the tablets of human hearts." Paul writes here as a minister of comfort, going through personal trials and frustrated by the church...and writes to comfort nevertheless. In fact he wrote many letters to encourage others, especially during his times of trials. I wonder if it helped him to take the focus off of himself and instead put it elsewhere - and that would be my prayer in this goal.

Many of the New Testament books are actually letters, always beginning with greetings of grace, peace and mercy. "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" says the start of Philemon (and Titus, Timothy, Corinthians, and others). In each letter Paul sends these greetings and then reminds them that he "Thanks God" for them - and prays joyfully for them. I often pray for my family and friends -and I joyfully thank God for the blessings that they are in my life. So, why don't I tell them as such? This is my New Year's goal. To be a 'letter of Christ.'

We write to make our Joy complete (1 John 1:4).