Letter People: Wednesday in the Word the Saturday Edition

I wonder if all writers are letter people. For the Gen X and older in the crowd, I don’t mean fans of the Letter People show. Though I loved that show when I was little. Hmm. Now I’m wondering if all writers in those age categories are also fans of the show. But that’s for another devotion. This time I’m talking about people who write letters.

Today is National Pen Pal Day. And it’s got me thinking about my pen pals growing up. My first one was the daughter of a missionary couple my family knew. She lived in the Philippines, and we wrote each other for several years when I was in grade school. I loved connecting with someone in another country and hearing about how she spent her days.

Then, I went to AWANA camp several hours from home between my seventh and eighth grade years. When I came home, I had new pen pals. Craig, Tara, and Doug wrote regularly, and I wrote them back often the day I received their letters. Doug’s letters dwindled after a while. Tara and I kept contact fairly regularly into high school. But Craig and I wrote consistently through high school and into college.  In fact, it was only after we were both married with kids that letters gave way to yearly holiday cards and eventually stopped altogether.

Though I only saw him in person once after that first camp experience, Craig was one of my best friends. I didn’t get to go to the movies or attend youth group with him. I rarely even spoke on the phone with him. Our friendship was confined to the page and moved at the speed of the United States Postal Service. More than one letter in a month was rare. But the distance and time didn’t diminish our friendship. We shared our successes and failures, our dreams and our struggles.

I don’t know if he would have considered me one of his closest friends, but I thought of him that way. Being an introvert made making friends in person a bit difficult. I was often overshadowed by those I was friends with, their personalities were so much bigger than mine. I had a few close in-person friends through the years, but they came and went like the seasons. Craig was the one who remained constant, and I could tell him anything. His letters helped get me through so many angsty teenage times.

Having a pen pal back then wasn’t like today where you can whip off an email and the recipient gets it in seconds. We had to wait for each other’s responses. Knowing this, we had to think through our responses before we sent a letter. There was no quick reply button allowing us to correct something we’d said. That made our correspondence even more meaningful. I’d anxiously check my mailbox every day starting two weeks after I sent my own letters. I couldn’t wait to hear from my pen pals.

While pen pals have, sadly, gone by the wayside for the most part, my generation wasn’t the first to have them. They didn’t even start with the United States Postal Service. Pen pals have been around as long as people have had some sort of writing implements. While their messages had a distinct purpose, Paul, James, Peter, John and Jude were all spiritual pen pals to the early church. Kept apart by the miles and sometimes prison, these early believers would write lengthy letters to the early churches. They would use their missives to thank, encourage, instruct, and correct these baby Christians in their faith.

How wonderful is it that in God’s own love letter to us, His Word, we have the opportunity to receive these letters as well? Think about it. The same letters written thousands of years ago to believers in need of direction and encouragement can and do speak to us now. God arranged that. Paul may have thought his letter to the Philippians was for their eyes only, but God uses this letter and every other book of the Bible to speak to us today.

He writes to us in the pages of His Word. We soak it in, and often, we write back through prayer journals and notes scribbled in the margins. Each of us have the most amazing, powerful, loving, and wise pen pal in the history of pen pals. As much as the memories of my pen pal days with Craig are, my earthly pen pal and his letters will never be as meaningful and understanding of me as the love letter my Father has written for me. And it’s a letter I can go back to repeatedly and find something new and perfectly fitted for each situation I face.

God is the most amazing pen pal ever. And He wants each of us to immerse ourselves in His letter to us. He wants us all to be His letter people.

Psalm 119:10-11 “With all my heart I have sough You; Do not let me wander from Your commandments, Your word have I treasured in my heart, That I may not sin against you.”