You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, 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 3:2-3-3)
Back before the advent of email, I wrote a lot of letters. I had several pen-pals all over the world, and I regularly wrote to friends who lived in other cities, states, and countries. In my teen and college years, it wasn't unusual for me to mail out a stack of three or four letters every few days. And the daily trip to the mailbox was always a big deal, because my friends were avid letter-writers, too.
Yesterday I was thinking about how much I prefer writing to speaking, how much more I like to have conversations on the page (or the screen) than in person. Blame deafness, shyness, introversion, whatever -- but I often think I could be eternally happy, just writing everything to everyone and never having to deal with the awkwardness of the spoken and heard word. As a child, I fantasized about a world where no one had to talk to each other, and we could all communicate just by writing. I know, it was kind of a prophetic fantasy.
But sadly, in this world where so much of our communication is now written through social media, text, and email, it's not quite the paradise of clear communication that I'd imagined. Instead it often seems to be an ugly, graceless world of cut-downs, name-calling, and cancellations, all turning on a fulcrum of logical fallacies, half-understood truths, and unchecked emotion. It's madness.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul says that his Christian readers are "a letter from Christ ... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." I've read this verse at least twice in the past six months, but I hadn't really thought about it until today.
When I think of myself as a "letter from Christ," I suddenly become aware of the weight of my every word, spoken or written. If I'm to reflect the Spirit of the living God, I need to reflect, seriously reflect, before I say or write anything. If my heart is the "tablet" on which Christ is written for the world, I need to do some serious heart-checking before I offer that tablet to be read.
These days, it is hard to know what to say, or how to say it, without wondering who will be offended, who will get angry, who will ghost you mid-conversation, who will unfriend you on social media, who will unfriend you in real life. There are certainly people who, when they see Christ in me, will want to unfriend me. And that's unfortunate, but it's something that will happen. What I don't want is to lose someone because my words were condescending, my spirit reflected something ungodly, or my heart was cruel.
When my friends, family, and co-workers see me, are they seeing Christ communicated through me? Am I taking seriously the weight of responsibility that comes with professing Christ? Important questions to consider, and to never stop considering.
Back before the advent of email, I wrote a lot of letters. I had several pen-pals all over the world, and I regularly wrote to friends who lived in other cities, states, and countries. In my teen and college years, it wasn't unusual for me to mail out a stack of three or four letters every few days. And the daily trip to the mailbox was always a big deal, because my friends were avid letter-writers, too.
Yesterday I was thinking about how much I prefer writing to speaking, how much more I like to have conversations on the page (or the screen) than in person. Blame deafness, shyness, introversion, whatever -- but I often think I could be eternally happy, just writing everything to everyone and never having to deal with the awkwardness of the spoken and heard word. As a child, I fantasized about a world where no one had to talk to each other, and we could all communicate just by writing. I know, it was kind of a prophetic fantasy.
But sadly, in this world where so much of our communication is now written through social media, text, and email, it's not quite the paradise of clear communication that I'd imagined. Instead it often seems to be an ugly, graceless world of cut-downs, name-calling, and cancellations, all turning on a fulcrum of logical fallacies, half-understood truths, and unchecked emotion. It's madness.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul says that his Christian readers are "a letter from Christ ... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." I've read this verse at least twice in the past six months, but I hadn't really thought about it until today.
When I think of myself as a "letter from Christ," I suddenly become aware of the weight of my every word, spoken or written. If I'm to reflect the Spirit of the living God, I need to reflect, seriously reflect, before I say or write anything. If my heart is the "tablet" on which Christ is written for the world, I need to do some serious heart-checking before I offer that tablet to be read.
These days, it is hard to know what to say, or how to say it, without wondering who will be offended, who will get angry, who will ghost you mid-conversation, who will unfriend you on social media, who will unfriend you in real life. There are certainly people who, when they see Christ in me, will want to unfriend me. And that's unfortunate, but it's something that will happen. What I don't want is to lose someone because my words were condescending, my spirit reflected something ungodly, or my heart was cruel.
When my friends, family, and co-workers see me, are they seeing Christ communicated through me? Am I taking seriously the weight of responsibility that comes with professing Christ? Important questions to consider, and to never stop considering.
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