Life Through the Lens: Outgoing mail

This post is the author’s personal opinion.

We had not long been in our new home in a retirement village when Ruth asked a resident, “Where’s the nearest post box?”

“There’s a mailbox on top of the brick wall by the entrance with a sign, ‘outgoing mail’ – put your letters in that, and when the postman delivers the village letters, he collects any letters in the box and takes them to the post office for us.”

With total faith and trust in the postman, letters are pushed through the slot in that box: letters to family and friends, mail orders, bills paid, business correspondence.

It is not an official, government-sanctioned post box.

Still, because of faith and trust, the system works.

The use of this system shows a belief that there is a connection between the postman and the postal service.

Believers and non-believers in God often have doubts and questions about the business of praying.

Prayer is a lot like that outgoing mail box.

Jesus himself tells us, “all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you” (Mark 11:24).

That is faith and trust.

In John chapter 10, verse 30, Jesus says, “the father and I are one”.

Also in John, Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the father but through me”.

That is the connection that ensures the system works.

There is, however, something the postman cannot deliver.

Only Jesus, by his self-sacrifice on a cross, has delivered for all who desire it the forgiving love of a loving God.

At Christmas, small thank you tokens of chocolates – sometimes wine – are often left in the outgoing mail box.

Maybe we could remember something St Paul wrote: “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the father” (Colossians 3:17).

We use mail and delivery services, trusting that delivery will take place even though we don’t see all that is involved.

So why do we find it so hard to believe that a God who constantly reminds us that he is motivated only by love will not or cannot deliver?

Talk to him about it.

God bless.

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