The Present Is Not For My Son's Future

In the May 28, 1998, edition of USA Today, the following appeared among the letters to the editor:

Will somebody help me save my son?

My son is two years old and is a reflection of complete innocence.  His vulnerability to this harsh, violent ignorant and uncaring world just rips my heart apart.  He knows nothing of the killing within the schools that are supposed to prepare children for the world.  He knows nothing of the abuse that happens within the homes of children just his age.  As he plays with his toys, he is oblivious to the tragedies that occur every day across the country.  And as he clutches his blanket, sleeping soundly, dreaming of the mommy and daddy who love him, he has no idea of the complete social and moral decay of our country.

Does anyone care anymore?  Will somebody please, please help me save my son?

- Edward Moats, Bellair Beach, Florida

- Letters to the editor in USA Today, (May 28, 1998)

What Giving Thanks Can Bring

During the Depression, William Stidger was in a restaurant with friends who were all talking about how terrible things were: suffering people, rich people committing suicide, joblessness. The conversation got more miserable as it went on.

A minister in the group interrupted. “In two or three weeks I have to preach a sermon on Thanksgiving Day,” he said. “What can I say that’s affirmative in a period of world depression like this?”

Stidger felt the Spirit of God saying to him, “Why don’t you give thanks to those people who have been a blessing in your life and affirm them during this terrible time?”

He began to think about that. He remembered a schoolteacher who was very dear to him, a wonderful teacher of poetry and English literature who had gone out of her way to put a great love of literature and verse in him, which has affected all his writings and his preaching. So he sat down and wrote a letter to this woman, now up in years. It was only a matter of days until he got a reply in the feeble scrawl of the aged:

My dear Willy,
I can’t tell you how much your note meant to me. I am in my 80s, living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely, and like the last leaf of autumn lingering behind. You’ll be interested to know that I taught in school for more than fifty years, and yours is the first note of appreciation I ever received. It came on a blue, cold morning, and it cheered me as nothing has done in many years.

“I’m not sentimental, but I found myself weeping over that note,” Stidger said. Then he thought of a kind bishop, now retired, who had recently faced the death of his wife and was all alone. This bishop had taken a lot of time giving Stidger advice and counsel and love when he first began his ministry. So he sat down and wrote the old bishop. In two days a reply came back.

My dear Will,
Your letter was so beautiful, so real, that as I sat reading it in my study, tears of gratitude fell from my eyes. Before I realized what I was doing, I rose from my chair and I called my wife’s name to share it with her, forgetting she was gone. You’ll never know how much your letter has warmed my spirit. I have been walking around in the glow of your letter all day long.

 — David A. Seamands, “Instruction for Thanksgiving,” Preaching Today Audio, no. 62

Letters Better Than Money

I ran short of money while visiting my brother, so I borrowed fifty dollars from him.  After my return home, I wrote him a short letter every few weeks, enclosing a five-dollar check in each one.  He called me up and told me how much he enjoyed the letters regarding the money I owed; I had never written regularly before.

Finally I sent off a letter and the last five-dollar check.  In my mailbox the next week I found an envelop from my brother.  Inside was another fifty dollars.

- Suzanne Attebery, submitted by Dicky Love, The Pastor's Story File (June 1995)

Angry Letter Almost Got Sent... With Regret

I remember a young fellow who one time in a fit of temper wrote a mean letter to his father.  As he and I worked in the same office, I advised him not to send it, because he had written it when he was in an angry mood.  However, he sealed it and asked me to mail it for him.  Instead, I simply dropped it into my pocket until the next day.

The following morning he arrived looking very worried.  "George," he said, "I wish that I had never written that letter to the old gentleman.  It will break his heart.  My, I'd give fifty dollars to get it back!"  

Removing it from my pocket and handing it to him, I told him what I had done.  The young fellow was so overjoyed he actually wanted to pay me the fifty dollars for not mailing his spiteful letter.

- George W. Martin, quoted by Roy B. Zuck in The Speaker's Quote Book (Christian Literature Crusade, 1997)