You've Got Mail

Who doesn't love to get mail?  Most days I am greeted by bills and flyers at my mailbox, though there is an occasional postcard from Mark in China, or a thank-you note for a kindness, but very seldom is there a letter.  Email and texts are the letters for today. But would Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail had as much impact if it had been written as an email?  What about the letters in our Bible?  Can you imagine the good people of Corinth gathering around the latest text from Apostle Paul?

Our Bible contains 21 letters, or epistles, in the New Testament.  Thirteen of these are attributed to the Apostle Paul.  He was busy sending advice to the new Christians in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae and Thessalonica.  He also had time to send a few missives to his pals Timothy, Titus and Philomen.  And several of these epistles were written while he was imprisoned.

The other epistles are called "general" or "catholic" (note the lower-case c) epistles.  Their authorship is attributed to Peter and John, among others.

This summer, according to the Revised Common Lectionary, we are reading the epistles of Paul beginning with his second letter to Corinth and then his letter to Ephesus.  Lisa will be leading a discussion of each week's reading beginning at about 9 am.  Lisa describes Paul as an interesting fellow.  "Persecutor turned proselyte, Paul took a fledgling movement and gave it wings to fly.  Without him, Christianity may have never flourished."  She promises to start off this first week's discussion with her own homemade biscuits and possibly grits from the Grits King--Bill McIndoo.

Biblical scholars have not discovered any proof that Paul included biscuits or grits as care packages with his letters.  But the fact that Christianity did indeed flourish has me thinking there must have been a few biscuits, if not grits, included with those letters.
--Amy Phillips Witzke