The following was received via email on December 22, 2023, and is posted here in its entirety and original form:

Warm greetings in love to my friends and church family at Union Grove UMC!

We read in the bible that over the ages, a well-documented tradition has been created whereby those with either a momentary leading of God’s spirit, or a lifetime calling in ministry have written letters to the church. Some of those letters were of a pastoral and instructional nature while other letters were written to uplift the members and leaders in the church. I was moved to write this letter while listening to Rev. Val speak during The Longest Night sermon.

I have to be transparent in that I have never written a letter to a church before. This is my first, and only God himself knows if he will move me to write another letter to a church after this. That is to say I am doing this led by the spirit, and not because of any other inspiration.

We live now in an advanced age of technology that gives us the gift and the ability to communicate even with total strangers in the very same way Jesus himself did during his travels across various lands and territories. We read in the scriptures that Jesus showed his love and compassion even with total strangers, even with those whom the hypocritical teachers of the law looked down upon.

Today I write in that same spirit of love, care, compassion, and thankfulness for your prayers and friendship even though we haven’t ever met or spoken. I am not a person of any great celebration or consequence in the world, but I am moved in this moment in time to continue the great tradition of writing letters to the church. The gift of internet technology should be used this way. God would not allow it if it wasn’t good in his eyes.

I am not a great or celebrated biblical scholar, although I do have a formal biblical education, and have spent half of my lifetime in the organized church across denominations. God has found use for me and my gifts, none-the-less. Let it be known that God also has a use for you and your gifts. You are loved, you are cared about, you are valuable, and you bring with you God-given things that only you can use in the world in the way you uniquely share those things in everyday life.

Reverend Val and myself met because of the gift of technology when she reached-out to me during one of my moments in experimental communications in a public forum, and I was touched deeply by her genuine heart for me and for people in-general. I am not a religious person, and neither am I hyper-religious. Val will tell you that my relationship with christianity and the organized church is one in which I rebel against harmful political and social cultures in the church, against spiritual abuse, and against abuse of scripture. I take the approach of careful study, quiet contemplation, and taking the time to understand the nuances of the bible. I am not a textual literalist, but am instead a person who seeks truth by asking questions, investigating, and seeking the counsel of those such as Rev Val who seek careful wisdom.

God himself knows how imperfect I am. God sent Rev Val my direction knowing that I was in need of a friend who understood me. God sees what season of life each of us are in, and he keeps his promise of not giving us more than we can handle in ways we simply can’t predict or perhaps even understand except in his timing when he knows the time is right to show us. “A promise made is a promise kept/just hold-on, God is holding on to you….day by day, prayer by prayer, oh don’t you ever forget that a promise made is a promise kept!” (Randy Stonehill – A Promise Made is a Promise Kept (from The Lazarus Heart) on Streetlevel Records, (c) 1994)

When Rev Val and I met, I was caring for my wife who was also my best, most closest, and most trusted friend in life. My wife was so very intensely sick as she fought valiantly and bravely to win the fight of her life against an incurable cancer. I was experiencing caregiver burn-out after numerous trips to the hospital, and numerous months literally living in a hospital room with my wife where I underwent intense medical skills training to be competent to care for her at home outside of an advanced care hospital environment.

Through surgical pain, anxiety attacks, hospital delirium and confusion caused by her intense suffering, through numerous complications and three separate respiratory arrests, I was there with her and never left her side except to go home occasionally for purposes of self-care, and so I could attend to business I couldn’t do by way of secure electronic communications. All of this while caring for a special needs teenager with no outside help, and little outside support.

I was burning the candle at both ends, metaphorically.

Val and I have much in-common, primarily, we both come from a place of care and concern for others. Val, because she is a Reverend, and me by way of having been raised in a family that practiced in the medical profession. My grandmother on my mother’s side was an R.N., and my mom became a nursing professional caring for Alzheimers and dementia patients, and those in need of palliative/hospice care at the end of their lives.

I mention these things because this is a real-life demonstration of God’s work in action, bringing Rev. Val and I to meet. God knows that if he is going to allow people’s lives to cross paths for whatever his reasons are, and he knows that if/when he does so for the purposes of giving someone a friend during a time of critical spiritual and psychological need, that the people he puts in our path have to be compatible with us as a person and with our needs at that time in that season of our lives.

This has been a hard season for me and my family, a season of loss, grief, and the pain it comes with. Rev. Val’s The Longest Night sermon spoke to this season of loss and grieving. Recently, I had a phone call with Rev. Val. During that call, I spoke of that moment when myself and the funeral directors walked my wife’s casket to the door of the church where the hearse was waiting, I cried in the deepest pain of my life, and couldn’t let go of that casket because I knew that would be my final moment with my wife who my best and closest friend in life. Val spoke the words, “She wasn’t in that box, but she was there holding you and comforting you”.

I was reminded by that statement, though I recognized it only after we had hung-up the phone, that my wife’s passing on an early Thanksgiving morning was only her taking absence of a body riddled by painful disease and suffering. That moment at 5:21AM on November 23rd, 2023, when she took her final breath as I held her hand, she was ushered into the biggest and greatest Thanksgiving celebration she had ever known. She was born into that place Jesus spoke of in the scripture, “In my Father’s house are many rooms, and I go to prepare a place for you. I would not say it if it weren’t true.” (John 14:2)

With this, I share with any of you or your familial or social circles that if you grieve a loved one, a dear friend, or someone else who was special to you, I come alongside you because you came alongside me as friends who shared their love for me in support and prayer through Rev. Val and that gathering you have come to know as your church family. I grieve with you, I cry with you, and to you I send my love and support.

Whatever hurts you, whatever makes you struggle, whatever difficulties you have in life, no matter what it is, I am there with you as a fellow human being, friend, and neighbor. This is the example of Jesus. This is the leading of the Holy Spirit. This is the way taught to us by the very author of our lives who gives us each and every heartbeat as a miracle. “I’m gonna celebrate this heartbeat/cause it just might be my last/every day is a gift from the Lord on high, and they all go by so fast” – Randy Stonehill, Celebrate This Heartbeat (C) 1984 from the title album “Celebrate This Heartbeat”

With this, we are reminded that every heartbeat is a prayer and prayer is a private conversation between us and God himself through Jesus and the counsel of the Holy Spirit. Where there is relationship with God, where there is prayer, and where there exists the gathering of believers, there is love. Love is living and love will find a way. “I know this life is a strange thing, I can’t answer all the whys.” – Amy Grant from “Love Will Find a Way”
Rev. Val recently posted to Facebook that if a church doesn’t welcome you warmly, and won’t have you because of their doctrine and political stubbornness, you are not the problem. This is backed-up by scripture in Matthew 25:35-36 “35 For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. 36 I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.”

Further, Jesus himself set the example of never turning anyone away. This is to say that no matter who you are, no matter where you’ve been in life, no matter where you are now, you belong. You belong in the world, you belong in the community, and you belong in the church because the church is not a building but a community of believers at various stages of spiritual growth and various stages of relationship with God.

Amy Grant communicates this truth in the song “Alright”. “I’ve heard it said when the river’s running high/You get to higher ground or you die/Well, muddy waves of pain washed over me/And it only made me see….

It’s gonna be all right.
I, I fall down on my knees;
Tell me that it’s all right.
You give me what I need.
Years of knockin’ on heaven’s door
Have taught me this, if nothing more,
That it’s all right, what may come.

This goes with Matthew 17:20 “20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

See, God knows that when we’ve been through any kind of trauma, even multiple traumas when we’re tired, when we’re tired of being tired, and when no matter how much sleep we may get, we still feel tired and worn-out….when our faith is at an all-time low, he tells us that faith as small as a mustard seed can move a mountain and the mountain will move. What he’s saying here is that faith of any amount is bigger and greater than whatever problem is staring us in the face.

This goes back to a part of Rev. Val’s Longest Night sermon about embracing our grief and loss, and knowing that its ok to not be ok. God wants relationship, communion, and relationship with us even in our most broken and messy state.

CCM artist Lisa Weyerhauser wrote in a recent song called “Beautiful to Me” performed with CCM legend, Randy Stonehill: “Moonlight blesses earth on the wings of holy night/drift the song of nightingales/feel my burdens grow light/You’re a beautiful child to me/the words I long to hear/and I offer back the love you gave/you are beautiful, Lord, to me.”

Though not a bible verse, there are many bible verses that tie-in with this proving that you are beautiful to God no matter what, no matter who you are, no matter your struggles or faults. The fact is that God remembers our names, and our hope is real, even in the bad times, even in the hard times that’s when we re-learn that lesson again, and we find God’s love in a fresh and a crucial way.

“In my soul there is one light shining from the flame of my true belief/and its embers cannot be quenched or robbed by any thief/in the end we are not forgotten and our journey is not in vain/for the master who brought us here….will lead us home….lead us home….lead us home again” – Randy Stonehill from the 1985 song, “Hymn” which ties-in with Matthew 6:19-21 “19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Here God is saying to us that the things we spend time accumulating here on earth during the course of our very short and temporary lives won’t be going with us. God’s gift of grace is free, as is his love and mercy. We can’t earn that, and so this verse is often mis-interpreted and mis-applied especially by pastors teaching the falsehood of propserity gospel. God is actually referring to treasures in heaven being the time spent in our relationship with him, even though he already knows that relationship on our end is going to be fraught with our own shadows and ghosts we wrestle with on a daily basis. Yet, still he says he wants us and loves us anyway, and still he invites us to store-up treasures in heaven.

The Longest Night has passed, and the days have become short. I close this letter to you with love and encouragement in the form of yet another musical response……..

When you look out of your window late at night
Whisper  a prayer for the friends you made in life
Do  you remember
The ones that helped you make it through?
Are you ready to lend a hand
When  others need you, too?

Hand  in hand
We walk together
Hand  in hand
We’ll serve the Lord forever
Hand in hand

Our only treasure that won’t rust of fade
Are  friendships that stand on love given away
So love one another
And love the Lord with all your heart
‘Cause that’s the way that friendships last
And the place that we should start

Hand in hand
We walk together
Hand in hand
We’ll serve the Lord forever
Hand in hand
We walk together
Hand in hand
We’ll serve the Lord forever
Hand in hand

DeGarmo & Key “Hand in Hand” from the album, “The Pledge”