I gently zip open the plastic container and slip a letter out. It is the last letter my then fiancé wrote me before I left home to join him. I haven’t read this letter since 1953.
I have always been somewhat sentimental and have kept precious things. I knew the letters were there but I did not have the courage to read them after my husband died. I felt it might hurt too much. Am I ready for this, I ask myself? Then I slip the letter out of the old envelope and there it is…the handwriting I knew so very well.
I can feel my eyes begin to tear and tell myself…”You wanted to do this, now go ahead.”
He tells of his anticipation of my arrival and how is he is already looking for an apartment for us to live in after we marry in the autumn…he says he can hardly wait.
There are more letters and I am so thankful I kept them all…I insisted he burn all of mine that he had saved over the year we were apart…he was not a “saver” so I was surprised he still had them…actually the story of our “waiting time” can be better read through his experience as he was dealing with what our future would entail as married personnel in the Armed Forces.
The letters are a story of the changes he had already experienced. They were filled with adventure and adversity. They were filled with homesickness and with longing. They told of what was and what was about to be. I am so glad I kept them.
I think our Bible would be so much less without the letters Paul wrote. Certainly his story is one of adventure and hardship but it is one of Christian growth and understanding and Paul’s concern and love for new Christians spill across the pages. They were hard years for Paul, but God had a purpose in placing him where he was…our faith would have much less direction if Paul’s letters had not been written.
And those that received them looked forward to them as much as I did my husband’s, so many years ago. They helped me carry on, knowing that in a few months we would be together. They gave me hope. Paul’s letters did that for the people of his day and also for us today.
Filled with encouragement and love, both sets of letters remind me that human plans can enrich our lives and so can God’s heavenly plans too. We are certainly blessed by both.
