Dear friend,
I want to be honest with you today in a way I have not been before.
I am an old man.
I do not say that for sympathy. I say it because it is the truth, and because the older I get the less patience I have for saying anything other than the truth. When you have lived as long as I have, you start to understand that time is not something you can afford to waste on things that do not matter.
And there are some things I need to say to you before my time is up.
I have been putting this letter off for months. Every Friday I sit down and I think about writing it and I find something else to say instead. Something safer. Something easier. Today I am not doing that.
So here it is.
The first thing I need you to know is this.
You are not losing your mind.
I know that sounds simple. But I have received enough letters from enough of you to know that this is the thing many of you are quietly wondering. The world has shifted so far from everything you know to be true that you have started to wonder if maybe you are the one who is wrong. If maybe the things you believe are simply old fashioned. If maybe the life you lived and the values you held were a mistake.
They were not a mistake.
In Isaiah chapter 5, verse 20, God said this — woe to those who call evil good and good evil. Who put darkness for light and light for darkness.
He was not describing a future possibility. He was describing a pattern He had already seen. A pattern that has repeated itself throughout human history. The inversion of truth. The moment when the world decides that what was always wrong is now right and what was always right is now wrong.
You are living inside that pattern right now. And the disorientation you feel is not weakness. It is the natural response of a person whose moral compass still works correctly in a world that has broken its own.
You are not losing your mind. The world has lost its way. Those are two very different things.
The second thing I need you to know.
Your prayers are not disappearing into the ceiling.
I have prayed every single day for fifty years. And I will tell you honestly — there have been mornings when it felt like I was talking to an empty room. When the silence felt too heavy and the answers felt too slow and the world outside my window looked nothing like the world God promised.
I know that feeling. I suspect you know it too.
But I have also lived long enough to see what happens on the other side of those prayers. The child who came back. The marriage that survived. The country that turned when everyone said it could not turn. The man who stood back up after everything was thrown at him and kept standing.
In Revelation chapter 8, verse 4, John wrote about the prayers of God's people rising before Him like incense. Not some of the prayers. All of them. Every quiet prayer said in an empty kitchen before the sun came up. Every desperate prayer said in a hospital waiting room. Every prayer you prayed for this country when you did not know if anyone was listening.
God collected every single one.
Your prayers are not disappearing. They are accumulating. And God answers them on His timeline not yours. That is not a comfortable truth. But it is the truth.
The third thing I need you to know.
What is happening in this country right now is not an accident and it is not the end.
I have spent the last several years watching something unfold that I can only describe as Biblical. Not metaphorically Biblical. Literally Biblical. The pattern is too precise to be coincidence. The opposition too coordinated. The survival too inexplicable by any natural measure.
A man tried in court after court. Impeached twice. Shot at from less than an inch away. Abandoned by members of his own party. Mocked by every institution in the country. And still standing.
I have read this Book too many times to look at that and see randomness.
In Daniel chapter 6, the men who wanted Daniel destroyed did everything right. They had the law. They had the king's ear. They had the stone sealed over the den. They had done everything required to make sure the story ended the way they planned.
And God rewrote the ending anyway.
I wrote everything I believe about this pattern in a guide called They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump. It is the most honest thing I have written. If you have not read it I want you to read it this weekend. Not because of politics. Because of what Scripture says about this moment and what it means for people of faith who are watching it unfold. You can find it here by clicking on the image below:
The last thing I need you to know.
I think about you more than you know.
Not as an audience. Not as followers. As people. Real people who write to me about their children and their fears and their prayers and their grief. People who found this letter for a reason and have stayed because something here felt true.
I am an old man. I do not have unlimited Fridays left to say the things I believe need to be said. I do not write these letters because it is a schedule. I write them because I genuinely believe that the people reading them matter and that the truth they contain is worth getting into as many hands as possible before my time is up.
You found this letter for a reason. I have never believed otherwise.
Do not let this weekend pass without telling someone you love that you love them. Do not let this Friday end without saying the prayer you have been putting off. Do not let another week go by carrying something alone that God is waiting to carry with you.
You are not alone. You were never alone.
God bless you, friend. I mean that more than I can say.
With you in prayer always,
Father Thomas
This weekend, I want you to do three things:
One. Write down the prayer you have been putting off. The one that feels too big or too impossible or too late. Write it down and say it out loud this weekend. God has been waiting for it.
Two. Call or message one person you love and tell them so. Not a text with an emoji. Actually say the words. Father Thomas is an old man who has sat with the dying. Trust me on this one.
Three. If you have been watching what is happening in this country and feeling like you cannot make sense of it — read They Tried To Stop Him this weekend. [LINK] It will give you the Biblical framework for everything you are seeing. And it will settle something in you that has been restless.