Film Friday When Rob is assigned a new number for his phone he starts getting text messages from an unknown woman. The messages are honest and heartfelt and he begins to fall in love with her. Little by little he engineers a meeting and that’s when things really move up a gear. I find it quite a compelling idea, the notion of an unexpected piece of communication turning up. I recently heard about a hundred-year-old letter which finally landed on someone’s doormat. The epitome of a late delivery I suppose. But these thoughts – about really old communication and a message written for someone else that arrives in our lives – they take me to the Bible. In there we have loads of messages which were written for other people and are very old indeed. Much older than a hundred-year-old letter… and yet they come alive for us. God brings them into our lives.
There’s a lovely verse in the first letter of John chapter 3 verse 1 that says this: ‘See how much God the Father loves us, his love is so great that he has called us his children.’ He has taken us into his family, he’s enveloped us, and embraced us in his compassion and kindness. And that’s a great message, particularly when you’re feeling knocked down or pushed away, rejected or uncared for. This deep reminder that God loves and cares for us is all over the Bible. Psalm 103 has lovely verses about the God who loves us and is compassionate and kind and gracious.
And these messages of God’s care and kindness come to us like a hundred-year-old letter dropping through our letterbox.
I think quite often it’s about timing. Sometimes we open our Bible and begin to read it just at the right moment, and a message that we may have read 100 times before suddenly comes alive in a whole new way. I remember the time that Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 11 really meant something to me, it says this: ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’ Those words were written thousands of years ago but for me they come alive regularly, and perhaps today those words will be just what God needs to say to you, or to someone you know.
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