You’ve Got Mail
Mom and Uncle Dale with their pet lamb, Billy.
Growing up I always enjoyed hearing Grandma and Grandad’s stories about farm life in rural Almena, Kansas. It took very little coaxing to get them to share a funny story about Mom when she was a kid. They were both natural story tellers and if they had had a YouTube channel, they would not have lacked for subscribers. So, when Mom recently found a devotion she wrote some 20 years ago, it was not unusual that it was framed in a vignette of memories painted by Grandma and Grandad.
She writes:
“Getting the mail had always been a high point of my day. Maybe it started in my early years as a barefooted child “getting” to go get the mail. I went trudging along the dusty path to the big silver mailbox by the side of the road. Perhaps Jack and Jill magazine would be there today! Or a postcard from someone! Anticipation was always part of the trip to the box.
Well, I still trudge to the post office box and sometimes there’s a renewal notice to a favorite magazine. When I consider the definition of renewal, to make new or fresh again; I’m reminded of thirsty flowers I’ve picked, and when placed in a vase of water, I’ve watched how they perk up again. Is that not true of our dry thirsty spirit when Living Water is poured in us?
How true is our Lord’s exhortation, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” (Mark 6:31 NIV)
Taking time for renewal gives a fresh supply of spiritual energy as we communicate with our Lord daily.”
-Donna Young
As I read this, I’m reminded we’ve got mail from our Heavenly Father. The light and truth of the Word is as close as our phone, a laptop, or the hard copy laying within reach at home. More explicitly, Romans 10:8 reveals “The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is the word of faith, which we preach."
Reading God’s letters to us in His word is how we make a deposit into our heart so it will come out of our mouth. But you have to open the mail first. Open your Bible. Let the living word reveal God’s truth, His willingness, His restoration to do a work in your life.
Letters to the church at Ephesus, Corinth, Phillipi, Thessalonica. These are letters addressed to you too.
In 2 Corinthians 3:2-3 (KJV) we learn, “Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in table of stone, but in fleshly table of the heart.”
The world is looking for something real. Something to believe in. They don’t need more junk mail. Let them read the God in YOU.