Dear friend,
I want to tell you about a night I have never written about before.
Not because I forgot it. I have never forgotten a single detail of it. But because some things feel too private to put into words, and for a long time this was one of them.
Today I am going to try.
It was winter. I was in my early forties. I had been with the Church for almost twenty years at that point and I had sat with enough dying people to understand, intellectually, everything the Church teaches about death and what follows it.
I believed it. I had always believed it. But believing something intellectually and being free of fear about it are two very different things. And if I am honest with you tonight — and I want to be honest with you tonight — I was afraid of dying.
Not constantly. Not in a way that paralyzed me. But the fear was there. Underneath everything. The way cold is underneath the ground in winter even when the surface feels solid.
And then one night everything changed.
I had been called to the bedside of a woman in her late eighties. I will not tell you her name. But I will tell you that she was the most unafraid person I have ever sat with in fifty years of ministry.
Not because she was numb. Not because she had given up. Not because the medication had taken the edge off everything including her awareness of what was happening.
She was completely present. Completely clear. And completely at peace in a way that I had never seen before and have rarely seen since.
I sat with her for several hours that night. And at some point, very late, she looked at me and said something I was not expecting.
She said — Father, are you afraid of dying?
I did not answer immediately. I am not sure I could have answered honestly if I had tried. So I said what men of the Church say when they need a moment. I said what do you mean?
And she said — I can tell. The ones who are afraid of dying sit differently at the bedside. They hold themselves a certain way. Like they are trying not to catch something.
I did not know what to say to that.
She smiled. Not unkindly. And then she said — I was afraid for a long time too. And then one night I read something and the fear just left. Like a window being opened in a room that had been closed too long.
I asked her what she had read.
She pointed to the Bible on her nightstand. It was worn in the way that only decades of daily reading can wear a book. The spine was cracked. Several pages had been folded at the corners. She told me to open it to John chapter 14.
I opened it.
And I read the words that I had read hundreds of times before. Words I had said at bedsides and in sermons and in hospital waiting rooms more times than I could count.
Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me. My Father's house has many rooms. If that were not so would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
I had read those words hundreds of times.
That night they landed differently.
I will come back and take you to be with me.
Not — I will leave a place for you to find on your own. Not — I will set up the destination and hope you arrive safely. I will come back. And take you. Personally. To be where I am.
That is not the language of an afterlife. That is the language of someone who will not let you make the journey alone.
I looked up from the Bible. The woman in the bed was watching me.
She said — do you see it?
I said I think I do.
She said — He is not waiting for you at the end. He is coming to get you. There is a difference.
I have been with the Church for fifty years. I have read that passage more times than I can count. And I had never heard it said quite like that before.
He is not waiting for you at the end. He is coming to get you.
Something shifted in me that night. Not dramatically. Not with any fanfare. The way ice shifts in late winter when the temperature changes — slowly at first and then all at once. The fear did not leave that night. But it started to. And within a few weeks it was simply gone. Not suppressed. Not managed. Gone.
I have not been afraid of dying since that night.
I want to tell you why I am sharing this today.
Because I know that some of you carry that same fear. Not openly. Not in a way you have told anyone. But it is there. Underneath everything. The cold beneath the surface.
And I want you to know that what that woman told me is true.
He is not waiting at the end. He is coming to get you.
That is not a sentiment. That is a promise made by the only person in the history of the world who died and came back to tell us what is on the other side. When Jesus says I will come back and take you to be with me He is not speculating. He is describing something He has personal knowledge of.
You do not have to be afraid.
I want to leave one more thing with you before I close.
That woman died three days after I sat with her. Peacefully. In her sleep. In the same bed where she had opened that Bible and shown me the passage that changed everything for me.
The nurse who called me said she looked like someone who had simply decided to go somewhere and gone.
I have thought about her often in the years since. About what she gave me that night without knowing she was giving me anything at all. About the way God uses the dying to teach the living things the living cannot seem to learn any other way.
And I have thought about how understanding what comes next changes everything about how you face what is happening right now.
That is part of why I wrote They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump. Not just because of the politics or the pattern. But because I believe that the people who understand what God is doing — who can see the shape of this moment in Scripture and recognize that it is moving toward something rather than simply falling apart — face the present differently. With less fear. With more steadiness. With the kind of calm that comes from knowing how the story ends.
If you have not read it yet I want you to read it this weekend. Not as a political document. As the work of an old man who stopped being afraid of the ending and started paying very close attention to what is happening before it arrives. You can find it by clicking the image below:
Alternatively, you may find it here: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
The woman whose bedside I sat at that winter night never knew what she gave me. She thought she was receiving ministry. She was giving it.
That is how God usually works. Quietly. Through the people you least expect. In rooms that smell like winter and old books and the particular stillness that gathers around a life that is nearly finished.
He is not waiting at the end.
He is coming to get you.
Hold onto that this weekend, friend. Let it do for you what it did for me.
God bless you. I mean that tonight more than usual.
With you in prayer always,
Father Thomas
This weekend I want you to do two things:
One. Read John chapter 14, verses 1 through 6 tonight. Not tomorrow. Tonight. Read it slowly. Read it out loud if you can. Pay attention to the specific language Jesus uses — I will come back and take you. Let that be the last thing that speaks into you before you sleep tonight.
Two. If you have been carrying fear about what is happening in this country and where it is all going — read They Tried To Stop Him this weekend: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
Understanding the pattern does not make the moment less serious. It makes it less frightening. And there is a difference between those two things that matters enormously right now.