Encouragement

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Postcards


As I walked down the dusty driveway of my parent’s farm, all I could think about is the new fall season catalog of cabelas, the hunters dream book, every outdoor enthusiasts manual of preparation. Without looking first I would grab all the contents of that old rusty can we called a mail box, then looking down, my hands were full of all the junk the world wanted us to know about and no sign of the precious catalog.

That cabelas never did show up. Checking the mail for the next two weeks I saw my parents routine, dad grabs a couple of envelopes he was expecting and mom said, throw the rest away, junk she called it. Here I am ten years later carrying on the legacy of checking the mail. Either I owe money or the world is infiltrating my life with the way I need to live or a product I can’t live without.

Fall was at an end, a long summer had past, being fully engaged in a rut, the snow lightly covered the golden leaves of autumn and winter was standing at attention with the promise of a good freeze and lots of frost. After retrieving the mail, I quickly darted back to my warm home with evening frost nipping at my heals. Tossing the mail on the table it slid into an evenly displace mess in which I could see all that was involved. Right there in the middle of all the heavy laden material that choked the life from me was a postcard. It was small and thin, not demanding much room or over powering such as the multitudes of advertising, but it was so different and so captivating. What a new and exciting feeling it brought with promises of change and escape from the norm.

I gazed at the front of this thing intently, covered with a foreign array of landscape that was not only unusual for this time of year but just didn’t exist in this type of climate. The palm trees set in the distance not distracting from the crystal clear waters teaming with fish as they over lapped the white sands. It was as if I was there, hearing the water gently stroke the shore, feeling the sun chase you through the trees, hearing many colorful birds sing songs of freedom to one another. Freedom from the dieing life I knew and the lonely rut I walked in.

It was my brother. He said that he has a lot to say but the picture says the most and the rest would be experienced when I got there. He also said not to worry about travel or stay, just to go to the airport and tell them who you are and that your brother had reserved the flight, everything else was prearranged! Was this real I thought? Their isn’t much more in the wondering or this part of my story for that matter, I quickly, in faith believed the message and went to the airport.

Many years later, after lots of thought as to the suddenness of that post card, I realized that this was none other than the picture of Christ. Didn’t He come in the midst of this world and the bondage of life’s expectations? Christ is our ultimate post card of a world far outside the realm of the everyday rut. He came as a picture of that place through healing and love, serving and forgiveness. We can imagine the apostles standing around watching the multitudes being healed of every disease and freed from the burdens of the religious leaders of their day. Now we have four postcards describing the goodness and love of the Christ who in turn is a picture and glimpse into heaven. Our minds cannot fathom what heaven is like, but just as my brother said, that one picture describes enough for now, not to worry, just get on the plane, so do the pictures of Christ sent through the postcards of the gospels give us strength to have faith enough to just show up to the reservation made by Christ for our eternal trip into paradise.

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