Letters From Far and Near

Ever since I can remember being able to write, I have loved sending letters to friends from far and near. As a young girl, I always looked forward to and excitedly anticipated a letter in return which was part of my motivation for writing in the first place. But as I got older and those I wrote to got older, I knew that they may not have time to respond, but some how I knew that they would be blessed if I sent a letter anyway. 

Writing handwritten letters through snail-mail may seem like an old fashioned, slow, and rather quaint past time communication. But I have been discovering, to my pure delight, that I am not the only one who wants to keep this old fashioned communication going. 

There is true beauty, delight, warmth, joy, strength, and encouragement that can be found through simply writing a handwritten letter and sending it through the mail. There is beauty in the note card that was picked out for someone special. There is pure joy and delight that is found in sending a letter of encouragement to another. It makes my heart dance and my eyes twinkle and my lips smile just thinking about that someone who will receive that letter and sometimes be totally unaware of its coming. It fills my own soul with warmth to know that a friend was thinking about me when I receive a letter myself in the mailbox; to know that someone took the time to put aside the electronics, stop work for a moment, and pause in life to write a thoughtful letter of how there life is going and to ask about my own; this is what brings such rich pleasure to my heart. 

Handwritten letters may seem out-of-date, old-fashioned, or quaint. Or maybe you've written letters or notes and never received a response and decided to give up on it. But I assure you that writing letters will never go out of style even if most everything else does. Maybe not many people do it, but the receiver will be blessed beyond measure to simply receive a thought-out handwritten letter that doesn't have a message that was sent out to a million other people, as well; a letter that tells you that they had you and you only in mind when they wrote it. Maybe you never will get a response, but that could be because it is a busy mother who simply needed a thoughtful encouragement and maybe God used your letter to give her the courage to keep on going with the work God has called her to do as a mother to many young ones, yet she doesn't have the time to write back. Don't lose heart, but have hope in the unseen, because sometimes we don't see the results of an encouraging handwritten letter, but you never know how far it may go.