A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Esther Mcllveen is a free-lance writer living in Richmond, B.C.
Frank Gaebelein in an article, “Striving for Excellence” says “What can we say of an age that has allowed letter writing to become a dying art?”
That’s really a double-edged question. That letter writing has become a dying art implies some important things. It presumes for one thing that writing itself has become a dying art for the average person.
It also suggests that we don’t care enough about people to take the time to write them letters that share something of ourselves with them. Fortunate is the person who has even a few friends to whom he can open his heart in letters. William Swanson in TWA Ambassador says:
“A good letter, in this era of telecommunications satellites and quipping note paper is something akin to a handmade afghan or a jar of home-made preserves; a small act of grace, a hand-wrought little gift from human being to another.”
In a letter St. Paul writes to Philemon from his Roman prison cell, he says, “Refresh my heart in Christ.” Paul was responsible for bringing Philemon into the kingdom and now as his father in the faith, he is in need of refreshment. What better way to reinvigorate someone than by writing to them a letter.
At a camp where I taught creative writing, we wrote letters of refreshment to those who had “fathered” or “mothered” us in the faith. The letters turned out to be highly creative but something more significant happened. God brought back to memory the details of their second birthing. As they recounted the process, a quiet joy returned.
For some the facilitator had been a parent, for others it was someone who had since died and for the majority, they had never written a letter of refreshment before. The appreciation unlocked a heightened sense of God’s activity in their lives and the remembered gift someone who cared enough to become involved with them personally.
The new year is an ideal time to take pen and paper and let your mind flash back to early beginnings and refresh the person or persons whom God used in your life.