Etching

Some of my relatives still write letters.  It's a beautiful thing - a long, lost art if you ask me, but writing letters, of course, has regressed to the point of near extinction by the facility of e-mail or text messaging.  The instantaneousness of receiving information far outweighs the benefits of a paid envelope, right?

Every birthday or anniversary, my parents send me a card.  Yes, cards are nice and they make me smile, the sentiment helps to brighten a day, but what I really search for is their handwriting.  They both have amazing script, loops and lines all in place.  If their handwriting was put in a 'lineup,' I could probably be able to pick them out at first choice.

And beyond the visible swirls and twirls of the writing itself, is the deeper appreciation for taking time to write something to me that will take almost two weeks to reach me.  By the time the letter arrives, everything in our lives could have changed, but that one letter that reaches me is a lasting impression about what was important to them at the moment, so it becomes important to me also.

It's the beauty of writing a letter: time, focus, legibility, depth of foresight (you have to know what you are going to write beforehand.  There's no erasing)

Moses was on top of the mountain a long time receiving a letter.  Forty days, we read, and the Israelites were getting a little impatient about this fated family vacation in the desert.  They approach Aaron, Moses' brother, and push him, "Come make us a god who will go before us.  As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what happened to him.'

When life becomes stagnant, stale or full of nervousness, we tend to think that God has abandoned us.  We need instant gratification for the calming of our senses and we have a penchant for quick, non-thought-out action.  It doesn't matter what we do as long as we do something.  For the Israelites standing in the shadow of a Mountain of God, their assumption was that God had done something to Moses so it was time to not only get a new God but get a new Moses, too.

But during the time that they had been waiting, God was crafting his own Magna Carta.  When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mt. Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.  (Ex. 31:18)

The tablets were inscribed on the front and the back.  (Can you imagine that?  God's own handwriting?)  Unlike writing an e-mail, scratching the entire covenantal law into stone takes time.  You all know how much focus it takes to write a neat, concise letter - preparation and careful legibility.  These forty days God was preparing the gift of the Law for the Israelites, that which would keep them safe in the community and in close connection with God.  But the Israelites ruined it with their impatience.

Questions:

1.  When was the last time you got a handwritten letter?  What was it about?  Did you keep it?

2.  What kinds of things are you most impatient about?  How does that affect your decision making processes?

3.  If you could write a handwritten letter today telling them about the most important thing in your life, who would you write it to and what would it entail?