The Letter

You are a letter from Christ

2 Cor 3:3

An envelope arrived in the mail that immediately piqued my interest. It was unexpected for a start, hand-written which is unusual these days, and it wasn’t my birthday.

Inside was a beautiful, hand-written thankyou letter from one of my former students who had studied and served alongside me for a few years, before moving on to pastures new some time ago.

Their gratitude for my investment into their personal spiritual journey was moving. It warmed my heart and encouraged me to keep helping others become more like Jesus. What a lovely letter.

But then it struck me, THEY were the real letter. Their life was now being read by the people they did life with and I’d simply had the privilege of penning a few lines in the ‘letter of their life’.

As Paul said of those he’d poured his life into in Corinth, ‘You yourselves are our letter, known and read by everyone, you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God on tablets of human hearts’ (2 Cor 3:2-3).

Our enduring legacy are the ‘living letters’ of people we did life with, writing on them the ways of Christ as we navigated it together. And the ‘writing’ goes on, so let’s do it more intentionally today. 

Conversely, we too are ‘letters from Christ’, penned by our godly friends, family and mentors for others to read, for which we are also grateful. Maybe it’s time we dropped them a note of thanks too. 

#lifeisaparable