Recently, my brother asked me to send him the history I had compiled about our family. I’m sure he didn’t realize how much of it I had written. While our parents were alive, we were able to find out something about our ancestors, and we now have a basic record of our grandparents, and their families who all lived in the former Czechoslovakia.

The descriptions of my childhood and growing up years were also well documented through the letters my mother wrote to her mother, from Singapore where we lived because of my dad’s work, and later, from Canada. Phone calls were rare in those days, and letters was how people communicated the stories of their lives. My mother wrote long, detailed letters.

Now my mother is gone, but I still have those letters, as well as those I would write to her faithfully every week. I could have phoned, but when my children were small, we didn’t just pick up the phone to chat every day, as we paid long distance charges. So letter writing continued, and a wealth of family detail was preserved.

The apostle Paul in the New Testament also wrote letters after sharing the gospel and establishing congregations of believers. He summarized the faith to churches he couldn’t always visit. Then he gave practical advice on how to live the Christian life. Paul wanted his followers to discern if their faith was real. In a letter to the church in Corinth he said, “Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you; if not, then you have failed the test of genuine faith.” (2 Corinthians 13:5 NLT).

How do we know that we are following the faith we embraced when we said “yes” to Jesus?

Paul wrote another letter to believers in Colossae: “Since you have been raised to new life in Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honour at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:1-3 NLT)

As I reread the chapters of my life that I was sending to my brother, I could see that my priorities were changing. It wasn’t a great shift or a startling testimony, but there was change nonetheless. My focus had shifted from living a life of pleasing myself, to a life in which I wanted to please God. I had new desires to learn more about Him. My hunger was insatiable; I wanted to read His Word. I had heard all the right theology in the services of my formal church, but now words leapt off the pages of the Bible I had never really read for myself before. I began to think about the things of heaven, rather than the things on earth.

Letters within my family now take second place to the letters, or epistles, written in the Bible. I’m glad that I know that I am “in the faith”. I know that my greatest desire is to live my life to please God. Is that your greatest desire?

Prayer: Lord, thank You for inspiring the letters in Your Word to instruct us and guide us. Help us to please You in all that we do. In Jesus’ name. Amen

Alice Burnett,
Red Deer, Alberta