I was watching a 1995 movie, “A Walk In The Clouds”, starring now famous Keanu Reeves as a young soldier who caught up in a pre-WWII frenzy, married a young woman (Debra Messing) whom he had just met a few days prior to leaving for the battlefront.
At times overwhelmed by the horrors of war, he had written daily letters to his bride, describing his experiences and how he felt about them. He also wrote about his dreams of coming home and how he wanted to return to his job selling specialty chocolate candy, buy a home and start a family. The time he spent describing his dreams took his mind away from the horrors of the fox hole and his wounded and dying fellow soldiers. He had poured out his heart, describing both his despair and his hopes for a better life and the ability to forget his present surroundings.
Then the war ended and he joyfully wrote that he was coming home. His ship landed and there were wives, children, friends and relatives to meet the returning soldiers. But no one was there for him. He simply picked up his duffel bag and found his way home. He still had his key so he let himself into their apartment, just to find his wife actively in bed with another man. She exclaims, “What are you doing here? I did not know you were coming home!”
He said, “Didn’t you get my letter?”
She says, “Oh honey, I got all those letters. What did you do? Write every day? But it was always about the War and what was happening and I just quit reading them.”
He exclaimed, “You did not read them? I told you all about my dreams for us when the war was over. You did not read them? You don’t know me at all! “
She said, “Oh, I just couldn’t get into them But look here, I kept everyone one of them!” And she shows him a large box of his unopened letters.
Is that the way we do Jesus? God has written us hundreds of Love Letters. We start reading some of them and decide it is just too hard to understand. It doesn’t apply to your life and you just can’t get into it. But you keep a Bible on the coffee table. You’ve still got Grandma’s Bible somewhere.
Maybe you even go to Church and listen to the preacher or Sunday School teacher share some things from the Bible. But you just don’t have time to search out the scriptures for yourself to see if what they are saying is true.
If you really love someone, would you be satisfied only hearing what someone else says your loved one said. Wouldn’t you want to read your loved one’s words for yourself? Wouldn’t you hunger to read every letter and search between the lines to feel what they were feeling as they wrote to you?
Would you be satisfied reading a daily letter written by someone else who quoted something your loved one said or did but never hearing directly from your loved one?
I wonder if the difficult times we are in just might be a trial. Many people say they are Christians but never open a Bible. They know who they are and God knows who they are. Soon the whole world may know who they are.
Been thinking about 