Letter from God after my Dad died

This letter was written, from my imagination, to try to illustrate what God would say to my Mom. It was sent to her shortly after my Dad died. At the time, I told Mom if the letter seems self-righteous or judgemental, please forgive me, because that was not my intent.

The letter was meant to be uplifting and encouraging, and not critical at all. This letter is reproduced now, about three years later, with Mom’s kind permission….it may help someone else who is grieving a loss or a separation (of any kind).

Postal address:
777 Viewall Crescent
Bubbling Stream Estate
Heaven

Dear Alison:
It’s a beautiful day up here: a few clouds, but mostly sunshine. It rained yesterday to freshen things up. The wattles peaked last week, but we still enjoy looking at those little golden balls of beauty. The bees are buzzing in and out of the purple lilacs which are in bloom down by the creek, and we all love their smell. We can hear the stream murmuring over the rocks as we write this letter from the front porch.

This is a personal letter to reassure you about some things. We do this once in a while, and we hope you don’t mind. The letter is meant to be an encouragement to you.

First, the powerful concept of grace. As you know, our children are saved by grace, through faith, which is a free gift from us. They cannot come into a full relationship with us without it, because they cannot do anything to earn their way into it…..other than accepting it. You know about that.

But grace doesn’t stop after salvation. All our children mess up from time to time, and make mistakes. That happens. Life is and always has been an obstacle course, since the time of Adam, and our children don’t always pick the best path. Sometimes they make choices that are wrong choices or hurtful choices, and they feel guilty and struggle with that.

But this is where grace comes in again. We recognize that our children are error-prone, which is the human condition, but we do not hold that against them. We love them with an immense love, and forgive them readily, over and over again. Our love and forgiveness are not based on their performance at all, except to admit that they mess up from time to time, and to confess when they recognize that. This was the breaking news that Jesus revealed when he walked the Earth a long time ago.

The awesome thing about this is that no matter how much our children have erred and no matter how yucky they feel, grace takes that away. Our children will never sin as badly as Peter did, when he directly denied that he knew Jesus while he was warming his hands by a fire in front of the soldiers. Denied Him not once but three times. Later, we wrote Peter a letter about that situation, to explain about grace and how much we still loved him, and had big plans for him. Real big plans!

With grace, every day is a fresh start, because all the previous mishaps have been washed away. They are gone. It’s a wonderful liberating feeling, and a tremendous way to start each day! Nothing can separate our children from our love, and our forgiveness.

Alison, we sincerely hope this letter is helpful.
Please know that, despite their imperfections and busyness, your own children love you, and that your grandchildren love you.
And we also love you more than you can imagine……
We are here for you, and want to help you get through this extremely difficult period of your life. Please reach out to us.

With grace and peace,
The Father
Jesus
H.S.
PS: three years after Dad died, my Mom is energetic (pulls weeds from her rose garden almost every day), friendly and chatty (can talk about things from the national football games in Australia to the local wheat farmer’s need for rain).

She loves to hike (she took off during one recent hike, and I couldn’t find her). In the tiny country town where she lives, she walks with a spring in her step, and has a twinkle in her eye (thats eye singular as she lost an eye to cancer many years ago). Mom has embraced the grace.
Oh yes, and she just celebrated her 90th birthday. Way to go Mom…….

The Gray Nomad.
Probing the practice of Christian believers….

“But those who wait for the Lord (who expect, look for, and hope in Him) shall change and renew their strength and power; and they shall lift their wings and mount up (close to God) as eagles (mount up to the sun); they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint or become tired” (Isaiah, chapter 40).

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