A Letter From a Friend

This is something we read for our family devotion this morning and I just wanted to share with you. It is from the Daily Devotional book called Solid Ground by Mark Finley. I hope you enjoy it as much we did.

Be Still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10

Have you ever felt unusually lonely? I remember one time when I had deep feelings of loneliness, the summer of 1965. I had just completed my freshman year at Atlantic Union College, in a rural New England town about 45 miles west of Boston, Massachusetts. The college administration had chosen me to spend the summer as a student missionary in Brazil. I had never traveled out of the United States.

I flew to Sao Paulo, Brazil, and then to Belem, Brazil, on the Amazon River. From there I joined a medical missionary team on a launch called Luzeiro VI. Our launch traveled up the Amazon. We were out of touch with civilization for about a month.

I often longed for home during those long summer days and evenings. I thought about my parents, but most of all I thought about a young woman I was dating. I longed to return to the mission headquarters just to get a letter from her. Without telephones, e-mails, faxes, or other means of communication, letters were my only tie to home. They lifted my spirits. They let me know that somebody at home loved me and cared for me.

Letters can make a profound difference. Letters inspired by God can make an even more profound difference. The remarkable bond that developed between Teenie and me through those letters led eventually to our marriage.

There is someone who loves you very much, who cares deeply, who is thinking about you constantly. He has sent you a series of letters inspired by His Spirit. Every page of Scripture reveals His love.

It must be extremely disappointing to Him that we are often too busy to spend time reading His love letters. Busyness is the enemy of spirituality, a spiritual cancer that saps the vital energy of the soul. You cannot rush spirituality. You cannot sprint through the presence of God. The words of the Psalmist echo in our ears: "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10).

Someone who loves you dearly has written you a precious collection of letters. Why not spend time reading them today?