Dear friend,
I sent you a letter on Wednesday that I have not been able to put down since.
Not because of the news I shared. I knew what the news was before I wrote it. I have been watching the world long enough that what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz did not surprise me the way it surprised other people.
What I have not been able to put down is the thought of you reading it.
I have been imagining you opening that letter over your morning coffee. Reading about the strikes, the missiles, the collapsing peace agreement. Feeling the weight of it settle into your chest the way heavy things settle. And then going about your day carrying something that most of the people around you probably do not fully understand.
I have been thinking about that since Wednesday morning. And I want to tell you what I have been praying for you since then.
I have been praying that the fear did not stay.
Not because fear is wrong. It is not wrong to feel fear when missiles are being intercepted over Kuwait and oil prices are surging and the president is at a NATO summit calling a nuclear-capable nation scum. Fear is the appropriate human response to genuine danger. I am not asking God to make you feel nothing.
I am asking God to make the fear move through you rather than stay in you.
There is a difference between feeling afraid and living afraid. Between acknowledging that the world is dangerous and building your whole life around that danger as though God were not in it. The people I have watched lose their faith over the years did not lose it all at once. They lost it slowly, to a fear that never moved through them, that settled in and made a home and eventually crowded out everything else.
That is what I have been praying against for you since Wednesday.
I have also been praying for something more specific.
I have been praying for the ones who read that letter alone.
I know some of you are surrounded by people who share your faith and your concerns about this country and the world. But I also know that many of you are not. Many of you are the only person in your household, or your family, or your circle of friends who is paying attention to what Scripture says about what is happening. You read Father Thomas's letters in private because the people around you would not understand why you find them important.
If that is you — I have been praying for you specifically since Wednesday. Not vaguely. Specifically.
I have been asking God to make you feel less alone in what you carry. To send you one person — just one — who understands. To remind you that the seven thousand who had not bowed their knee to Baal were always there even when Elijah could not see them. The ones who see what you see are never as few as it feels like they are.
And I have been praying one more thing.
I have been praying that what I wrote on Wednesday gave you something to stand on rather than something to sink into.
That was my intention. I did not write about wars and birth pains and the signs of the times to send you into the week frightened. I wrote it because I believe the people who understand the pattern are the ones who do not lose hope when the pattern intensifies. Understanding what you are watching does not make it less serious. But it makes it less disorienting. And disorientation is what turns fear into despair.
I hope the letter did that. I hope you closed it feeling more grounded, not less. More steady, not more shaken. If it did the opposite — if it added weight rather than gave you a framework to carry the weight — I am sorry. That was not what I intended. Write to me and tell me and I will do better.
Here is what I want to leave you with this Sunday.
In Romans chapter 8, verse 38, Paul wrote something that I have returned to more times than I can count across fifty years of watching the world move through dark seasons.
He said — I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Neither the present nor the future.
Not the Strait of Hormuz. Not the NATO summit. Not the missiles or the oil prices or the collapsing ceasefire or whatever comes next in a week that is not finished yet.
Nothing in all creation.
That is not a sentiment. That is a theological claim made by a man who was writing from a prison cell, who had been beaten and shipwrecked and left for dead, who had more reason than almost anyone to doubt it and chose to write it anyway because he had tested it and found it to be true.
It is still true this Sunday.
You are not separated from the love of God by what is happening in the world this week. Not by the fear you felt on Wednesday. Not by the worry you carried through the weekend. Not by anything.
Hold onto that today, friend. Let this Sunday be quieter than the week that preceded it. Let the news be quiet for a few hours. Let God be louder than the headlines for just a little while.
I will be back on Monday. We will face the new week together.
God bless you. I am glad you are here.
With you in prayer,
Father Thomas
Today I want you to do one thing.
Just one.
Find ten minutes today — not tomorrow, today — and read Romans chapter 8, verses 31 through 39. Read it slowly. Out loud if you can. Let it be the last thing that speaks into you before the new week begins.
That is all. No action points today. No calls to action. Just you and that passage and the quiet that Sunday is supposed to offer.
You have earned the rest, friend. Take it.