First Class Mail

At risk of sounding like I pack-rat, throughout my life I have felt it important to save some things.  Sometimes I save whatever it is because I think the kids may enjoy it at some later time.  Sometimes I save whatever it is because I suffer from a common man disease called "it might come in handy sometimes".  And sometimes I save whatever it is because something inside of me signaled that down the road I might want to check back on it as a means of doing a self check.  This usually happens with some form of written communication I may have received, written, or a copy of what I may have sent.

I recently came across a letter I "received" 17 years ago.  It was hand written, and paper it was written on is now yellowed and aging.  It had been tucked away in an old Bible which was on the shelf with some reference books.  The letter was deeply personal in nature, and went into great detail about the relationship between the "writer" of the letter and myself.  It gave me, sitting here in 2014, a really clear picture of the depth and scope of the relationship we had 17 years ago because it was very detailed, very open, and painted a picture of me that I had not seen in many years.  It was first class mail.

I was in a men's small group at church back then.  It was a small group specifically for very broken men, and most of the guys in that group had, in the course of their lives, had issues with all kinds of addictions and other legal matters.  Most has spent some time in jail at one point or another.  We sometimes joked, in an off hand way, that we were a bunch of hard core bust-outs trying to be hard core lovers of the Lord.  It wasn't however a joke, because that is what it was.

The first class mail I spoke of was part of an exercise in that men's group.  One week, each of us wrote a letter from Jesus to ourselves.  We were to take our time, be open and honest, be totallly free, and write a letter to ourselves just as we pictured Jesus might write it.  It was a pretty eye opening and humbling experience to do that, and then share it with the group---which we did.

As I sat and read that letter written in 1995 "to Joe from Jesus" over coffee today it clearly showed me who and what I was then, and I was able to compare the Joe-then with who I am now.  So much so that it begged the question....'if Jesus were to send me a letter today, what would He say in it"?

That's a pretty important question for all of us to consider isn't it?