Tag: letters

Love Letters of God

jamieahughes1 Comment

Of all the servants of Jesus Christ, the one with whom I most easily identify is the apostle Paul. He struggled with many of the same issues I face—pride and illness being chief among them—as well as a list of trials as long as my left leg. He went through a series of painful deprivations and punishments I cannot even imagine enduring. However, Paul is the man who also said in Philippians 4:11-12:

I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.

I admire him because he both made statements like these and lived them out. Don’t believe me? Go read Acts 16:25, and you’ll find a man who has been beaten and chained to a wall who, instead of worrying or griping, is praying and singing to God. That is evidence of someone who is content in all circumstances!

Of all his amazing epistles, I believe 2 Corinthians is my favorite. The first reason is because my personal scripture, the one I use when I give my testimony, can be found there (12:7-10). It is the passage that helped me make sense of my disease, what purpose it served, and why God allowed it to happen to me. I feel a kinship with Paul for this reason because I know what it feels like when your body betrays you and you cannot live a “normal life” because of it.

Another reason I love studying this letter to the church is because of its personal nature. More of Paul’s heart is on display here than in any of his other writings. In everything he penned, his encyclopedic knowledge is made apparent, as are his rhetorical and philosophical skills. After all, this man, before being struck blind on the Damascus Road, was a Pharisee, a group of Jews who were highly respected for their learning and were considered to be the best and most accurate explicators of Jewish law.

In Galatians, he patiently and methodically explains why there is no longer a need to rely on the law for salvation, and his soaring language in books like Ephesians makes the spiritual inheritance all believers enjoy as clear and understandable as a one-bowl recipe. However, his work in Romans is his most masterful and still stands as the book of the Bible that Christians use to share the truth of salvation with non-believers (a technique commonly referred to as walking the Romans Road.) However, only in 2 Corinthians does Paul “get personal” and share his feelings and emotions as well as his thoughts.

I must throw a in caveat here. All scripture is inspired by God and given to men like Paul to compose and share with us; however, there is something of the scribes He chose in those works as well. Their diction, the ways they turn a phrase, and other little affectations show that while the truths are certainly God’s, there are flashes of the humans who served as His amanuenses as well.

Finally, Paul was a man who wrote beautifully but was less than impressive when it came to speaking in public, and that’s another reason I identify with him. I, too, am good with a pen and terrible behind a podium (especially when the speaking is extemporaneous!)

Because it is my favorite, I return to 2 Corinthians often for comfort,  to re-read familiar passages when the world seems to be out of whack. While studying it, I am reminded of why I trusted Jesus as my Savior and why I can stand firm on His promises no matter how unsettling my circumstances. Today, I was reading and came across a few verses I’ve read many times before. However, for some reason, it jumped off the page at me. It is 2 Corinthians 3:1-6, the passage in which Paul defends his authority as an apostle and a messenger of Jesus. it reads:

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you? You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

What struck me was the beautiful metaphor in this passage—“You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men.” A letter of commendation was a form of communication written by one individual to another “vouching for” a third person who was unknown to the letter’s recipient. (Yo hear them mentioned often in an Austen novel as “a letter of introduction.”) Essentially, it was a document in which one friend told another, “I know you don’t know this person, but I do. He’s okay; you can trust him.”

Paul is telling the believers at Corinth, “You are proof of my authority. You are a changed people because of the God who I serve. The fact that your hearts were renewed by the Holy Spirit is the only evidence you need to know what I say is right and from God.”

He then goes on and creates an extended metaphor from this original comparison:

  • “You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men”–You are my letter, and all men can look at (“read”) you. They know you have been changed because of the power of the Holy Spirit.
  • “being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us”–You are, in truth, a “letter written by Christ.” It is He who has wrought such a change in your lives, and I, Paul, am but a steward. I care for you, but I am not your author.
  • “written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God”–The change in you was not written in permanent ink but with the Holy Spirit. It is His indelible mark on you for all time as a child of God.
  • “not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”–You are His writing surface, and He marks you as permanently and definitively as He once wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone.

That is simply amazing text! However, Paul follows it up with the best part of all. After explaining that his “adequacy is from God,” he explains the difference between the writing surfaces (the stone versus the human heart). When he states, “As servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit,” Paul is indicating we are not bound by the laws he knew so well. None of us is forever a slave to over six hundred laws that could never be perfectly followed and always required sacrifices for atonement. The covenant Jesus established at the Last Supper is the New Covenant, the one for which He was the atoning sacrifice that covered all our sins. This is why he states, “for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

Think about what this means. As Christians, we are walking, talking, breathing, living love letters of God. Each one of us is evidence, a letter of commendation others can read to learn more about Him. That is why our actions and our attitudes are so essential; we represent the Lord in all our daily dealings with the world. That is why one of the last things Jesus taught His disciples is important for us to remember; it is the essential rule we must follow in our role as His missives. In John 15:35-36, Jesus states, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (Emphasis mine).

Friends, we are truly the love letters of God, ones who must always strive to be accurate representations of their Author.

The Rainbow Connection

jamieahughes5 Comments

As a proud member of the small but mighty, idiosyncratic group of people called Generation X, I’m a middle child of history. Unlike my cousin, a child who’s always had the Internet, handheld video games, instant downloads, and GPS, I remember life before technology. I remember VCRs, answering machines, and being my parents’ remote control. I remember the method by which we would contact each other in high school, without the aid of cell phones and texting,  if our plans went awry at the last minute. (Remember phone trees and cruising?) If pressed, I could still locate data and create a research paper without the help of a computer. I liked waiting on pictures to be developed to see what I’d captured. I enjoy actually buying CDs to read the liner notes and experience the CD visually as well as aurally. I honestly miss getting letters in the mail.

Suffice it to say, sometimes the world that is opened by the Internet is something that can, at times, cause me to marvel. For instance, with The Herscher Project, my online writing group, I am what I consider to be good friends with a good many people I have never met. In fact, the group’s founder, James Bowers, and I have had many discussions about writing and life in general, and I have confided things to him that I reserve only for friends. I’ve never physically laid eyes on the man, but he’s part of my inner circle despite that fact.

Facebook, despite its many faults and its tendency to brainwash anyone using it who’s under the age of eighteen, has allowed me to connect with people from all the schools I’ve loved and lost in my long journey as a Wal-Mart refugee child. People I’d thought I’d utterly lost track of now inform me about their children’s daily victories and the fun up-and-coming events in their lives with the click of a mouse. It’s like watching a scrapbook being made digitally.

The same goes for this blog. I’ve had people visit here to read my two cents on a given matter, and many interesting things have happened as a result–some positive, others less so. I’ve begun to read the thoughts of others, too. For example, I enjoy the blog Francopolis, written by Michael Franco, a fellow English teacher who is slogging through life like I am, trying to do the best he can with what he has. I root for him, identify with him, and give him support when I leave comments. All this with a man I’m never likely to meet! However, I think my life would be far less rich without knowing he’s out there.

I love the posts from Lovely Shades of Nostalgia written by a young lady who, like me, takes joy in things that aren’t technological. Yes, I see the irony in using technology to write about what technology is missing, but that’s part of the joy, too. Kids like my cousin, those who don’t remember the absolute, make-your-colon-want-to-explode excitement that came over you when The Grinch Who Stole Christmas came one (because it only aired once each Christmas season, not on demand or on DVD) or just how cool having a pen pal in Brazil can be, can read her blog about “the good old days” and understand a little more about a world they never knew existed.

One of my favorite blogs is Accidental Stepmom, a hilarious look at life raising five stepkids when you never expected to have any yourself. The author, J.M. Randolph, is an honest and altogether awesome quirky gal who manages everything with humor and a wry wit that never fails to amuse. I look forward to her updates, and although she and I are fairly dissimilar in lifestyle and ideology, I have found a kindred spirit in her, someone I can look to and learn from.

Here’s where the Kermit playing the banjo bit comes in.

Last week, she had a “photo caption” contest on her blog, and I entered it. You can read all about it here. Well, my caption won first prize, which happily happens to be a $10 gift card to Starbucks. I received it in the mail yesterday, and it even came with a lovely note!

I now have something written in her handwriting, something from this amazing person I might never meet in the flesh but who I know well through the thoughts and stories she takes time to share online. In it, she tells me about her passion for stationary and how she buys too much of it, knowing she can never use it all. The same irrational need to buy it comes over me when I’m in a bookstore. She informed me that she’s been to my new town, Atlanta, and remembers it fondly when the show she was working for played the Fabulous Fox Theater. Most of all, she thanked me for a laugh, something that cost me nothing to provide and gave me great joy to do.

This connection, the exchange of information and happiness, would have been impossible without the technology we have available to us today. While I shun a great many technological trappings such as Twitter because it is impossible to have any meaningful conversation in fewer than 140 characters, I still marvel at things like blogs and vlogs that allow people who might never have otherwise know the other existed the chance to say hello, exchange information, and even send an artifact or two to one another to make that connection tangible. That’s what makes it so amazing to the lovers, the dreamers, and me.