Treasure from a Snail

Snail mail has been deleted from our modern lingo. With technology, messaging is at real time, faster than a cheetah.  

In olden days, the snail was a bringer of treasure. The waiting took days and nights of excited anticipation. Then when the mail finally arrived, a sacred ritual ensued: from carefully opening the envelope to joyfully reading the message handwritten by the sender. You could feel his/her heart and soul  with every word. 

On January 1 this year, son #3 asked me to look for a document I might have filed by mistake. Instead, I found one snail mail I received 10 years ago! 

What makes it a treasure? It came from someone I never met. Let me quote parts of it . . . 

“Two years ago, someone gave me a copy of Gifts of Grace. I read it in just two days. Then I read it again slowly and took notes. After a while, I began lending it to my friends, mostly Pastors’ wives like me.  Unfortunately, it never returned so I asked my daughter in Manila to buy me another copy . . . 

“Last Christmas, she gave me a copy of Grace Found Me. Again, in just two days, I finished reading it, then went back to read daily and slowly.”

What this snail mail tells

 me is that my books go to places I may never set foot in, and that they minister to different types of people. In this case, a church worker.  

Now, why would I re-discover it on the first day of the year? Well, I take it as reminder that I have a job to do.  I have to finish that book I was assigned by CSM, my publisher, to write. But I had mimicked the speed of the snail by writing too slowly due to distractions like holiday activities and such. 

So now it’s back to the “work” I love. I hope to mimic the cheetah, a creation built for speed and grace.