One of my favorite parts of my days growing up was running and getting the mail because of the anticipation of receiving a letter from my grandma. My grandma Jan was a faithful letter writer. Every letter that she wrote began with a greeting and an update on the weather. She ended every letter with a charge to keep loving the Lord and backed up her charge with scripture. One of her favorite was Philippians 1:6 which says, “And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” I cherish these letters from my grandma because they were written in her own hand.

Sadly, letter writing has been moved aside for texts, snapchats, and emails which all are sad replacements. They are not permanent, rarely personal, and easily misread unless you throw in 100’s of emoji’s to try to get your point across. For someone like me who is terrible at texting, they can be full of mistakes and potentially say things that were not meant to be said. A few years ago a sweet young girl on Facebook posted many pictures that she had taken and one day there was a photo of her. This photo captured her so well and I replied with a smiley face and comment. I meant to say that the photo of her was so pretty but my ‘pretty’ autocorrected to ‘plumpy.’ What in the world? I didn’t catch it and had to actually make a phone call to this girl and her mom to explain. So embarrassing!!!

With that, I have resolved to begin writing letters once again. Who would like to join me?

For the next weeks, we will be looking at the book of Philippians; a letter written to the Philippian Church from Paul and Timothy. Let’s see what things they had to say to this church and to us today. Today we will only focus on the first seven words.

Philippians 1:1-2 – The Greeting