Postcards From God

When I was growing up my parents had some close friends who loved to travel. Those friends would send back delightful postcards no matter where they went, and they always ended their message with this scripture notation. It is 3 John: 13,14 — “I had many things to write, but I did not wish to write to you with pen and ink, but I hope to see you shortly, and we shall speak face to face.”

When I read gospel scriptures memories of those postcards come flooding back to me because I feel as though I am reading a postcard from Jesus when he says, “I still have many things to say to you.”

Getting a postcard from a traveling friend is fun but how much more wonderful and amazing to get a postcard from God? There is so much I want Him to tell me!!! And as I read this postcard He speaks clearly as our Triune Savior. It is through scripture that God reveals himself to us and yet with our human brains we cannot fully grasp who He is. We know that God’s ways are higher than our ways. Yet our Father does not ask us to truly understand His triune nature. All He asks is that we trust Him and leave all the details to Him.

When we ponder the mystery of who God is we need to think about all that God does for us. He did not reveal His triune nature in order to confuse us. He did it to show us the many aspects of His Love and His works of salvation.

Listen to what Jesus writes in this postcard He sent us: ages ago I was set up, at the first before the beginning of the earth. The spirit of truth will hold your hand and guide you into truth like a friend. He will make sense of everything. And Jesus establishes a history or lineage for the spirit of truth: The spirit will speak what he hears and will glorify Jesus, taking what belongs to Jesus and declaring it to us. Jesus is always quick to glorify His Father and here He says that all that the father has is His. We see the Triune God proclaimed. God in three persons, blessed trinity, and we see how the word of God travels from Him to his son Jesus through the Holy Spirit to our hearts and our ears.

So we know with certainty that God’s Love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. A Holy Spirit of truth who is here now and is not going away. Our souls are set on fire by that spirit and the day of the Lord has come.

In our postcard Jesus says that we cannot bear everything all at once. He wants us to gradually absorb the Holy Spirit into our lives. How do we do that?

By coming together to worship, to hear and to study scripture, to be together for the joy of being together with our brothers and sisters in Christ. This is the strong base of Christian fellowship that we need so that our spirit is less diluted when we walk through these church doors into our every day lives. The Holy Spirit helps us to pray for each other, believe in each other, and to love one another.

By coming together to break bread we feel and absorb the Holy Spirit. I always feel as though we are in a moment of the cross when we sainted ones stand together at the rail but are also in communion with everyone who has gone before us.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:

The earth is crammed with Heaven

And every common bush afire with God

But only he who sees takes off his shoes

The rest sit around and pluck blackberries

We know we have the spirit of truth within us so we need to be the ones taking off our shoes, realizing that we tread on hallowed ground. We belong to and walk with the Holy one. We are children of God who are sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.

The Holy Spirit has come to dwell within us. Poured into our hearts. So now when we look at others we see them through Jesus. We can read His loving postcard by putting on what I call our grace glasses — those special glasses that see beauty where there might be a deformity or see good where there is bad. They are glasses that can refract the forgiveness we have been given so that we can share that same forgiveness with others.

As I clean my grace glasses I can see there is a little bit more writing here:

PS…God’s Love has been poured into your hearts. All the Love and security and joy that could ever be imagined is now yours. Love, God

Ponder what you would really like to hear God say to you. Write it down and then put your card where you see it frequently and read those words from our loving triune Father, Son and Holy Spirit.