Time-Traveling Letters

Hi, and welcome to another daily reading from Our Daily Bread. Today's encouragement is titled Time Traveling Letters, and it was written by Amy Peterson. More than a million young people take part in the international letter writing competition each year.

In 2018, the theme of the competition was this. Imagine you are a letter traveling through time. What message do you want to convey to your readers? In the Bible, we have a collection of letters that, thanks to the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit, have made their way through time to us. As the Christian church grew, Jesus' disciples wrote to local churches across Europe and Asia Minor to help the people understand their new life in Christ. Many of those letters were collected in the Bible we read today.

What did these letter writers want to convey to readers? John explains in 1 John chapter 1, in his first letter, that he's writing about that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched. He's writing about his encounter with the living Christ. He writes so that his readers may have fellowship with one another and with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. When we have fellowship together, he writes, our joy will be complete. The letters in the Bible draw us into a fellowship that's beyond time, fellowship with the eternal God. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from 1 John chapter 1, verses 1 through 8. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life.

The life appeared. We have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

We write this to make our joy complete. This is the message we have heard from him and declared to you. God is light. In him, there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son purifies us from all sin.

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Let's pray. Dear God, we thank you that as your children, we can have fellowship with you just as we do with a good friend. May we grow closer to you as our conversations become more honest and vulnerable and we learn to trust you with even our deepest, deepest desires and struggles. Thank you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.