What Did You Write Today?

Nancy R. DeHaan
MACSA Executive Director

When was the last time you wrote a letter? Not a quick note to a parent or an email to a colleague or a “note” on your Facebook page – but a real honest-to-goodness letter – on paper, with ink, in your own handwriting?

I am a big fan of electronic media. I appreciate the “almost” instant communication of email and instant messaging – and I am learning how to text message, too! But getting an email is not the same as getting a letter – there is something “missing” in the electronic communication.

This concept hit home for me several years ago when my son returned from an 11 month deployment to “The Sandbox” in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He had pretty regular Internet access during his deployment and we were able to exchange email and IM – a great way to keep in touch while he was half a world away. When he returned home, he hadn’t printed out and saved any of my emails, but . . . he brought home a packet of letters – handwritten by his great-grandmother (who was 100+ years old at the time). She wrote to him every week – for the entire deployment. The letters had been opened and read – and re-opened and reread – many times over. Letters have a sense of permanence that electronic communications do not.

In his second letter to the church at Corinth, Paul refers to the Corinthian Christians as “his letter of recommendation . . . to be known and read by all.” It was a letter written “not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” (2 Corinthians 3:3) The changed lives of the Corinthians testified to the work of the Spirit in their lives (individually and as a church) as a result of Paul’s ministry.

Back to the opening question – When was the last time you wrote a letter?

· Every day in your classroom, you are writing a letter – not with ink or crayon, but with the Spirit of the living God.

· Every day in your classroom, you are writing a letter – not on the back of the lunch memo or the bottom of the spelling paper, but on the hearts of your students – individually and as a class.

· And . . . every evening at home, the parents are reading your letter.

So . . .

What did you write today? Was it a letter of recommendation – to be known and read by all? Was it a letter dictated by the Spirit of God and written on the hearts of your students? Was it a letter worth reading today – and tomorrow – and for many years to come?

May God bless you this year with 180 days of great letter writing!

And . . . sometime soon, recover the lost art of letter writing. Sit down with pen and paper and write a letter to a loved one – fold it, seal it and mail it – and know that your time and effort will be appreciated.