Dear friend,
I want to talk to you about someone specific this Friday.
Not a politician. Not a celebrity. Not someone who ever had a microphone in front of their face or a camera pointed at them.
I am talking about you.
Or someone you loved. Or someone you buried. Or someone you watched give everything they had to something that never once said thank you.
I have been thinking about this all week. Because so many of you have been writing to me. And underneath every letter — underneath the questions about Trump, about the country, about what is coming — I keep hearing the same quiet thing.
A tiredness. A feeling that the life you lived, the things you sacrificed, the values you held onto when everyone around you let go of theirs — that none of it counted for enough.
I want to speak to that today. Directly. Because I do not think anyone else is going to.
You built this country.
Not the people on television. Not the senators. Not the celebrities who host award shows and tell you what to think.
You.
The farmer who got up before sunrise for forty years without complaint. The factory worker who gave his body to a job that gave him nothing back but a paycheck and the dignity of providing. The mother who raised her children on almost nothing and made sure every one of them knew the Lord before they knew anything else. The veteran who came home from a war nobody wanted to talk about anymore and just got back to work without asking anyone for anything.
The small business owner who opened at six in the morning and closed at nine at night and employed his neighbours and never once appeared on a list of important people. The Sunday school teacher who showed up every single week for thirty years to a classroom of fidgeting children and planted seeds she never got to see grow.
I remember that America. I watched it being built by people exactly like you.
And I want to say something that I suspect nobody in your life has said to you recently.
Thank you.
Not because you need my thanks. You never needed anyone's thanks and that is exactly what made you who you are. But because I think someone reading this letter right now has been carrying a quiet grief about it. A feeling that the life they lived was being talked about like it was a mistake. Like the way they raised their children was wrong. Like the things they believed were embarrassing. Like the work they did did not matter.
I want you to hear this clearly.
God kept a record.
In Luke chapter 12, verse 6, Jesus said — are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.
Not one sparrow. Not one.
The sparrow that nobody notices. The sparrow that has no value in the marketplace. God has not forgotten a single one.
If God keeps a record of sparrows, do you think He forgot the woman who got on her knees every night for fifty years and prayed for this country? Do you think He forgot the man who worked himself to the bone so his children would have something better? Do you think He forgot the pastor of a small country church who buried his congregation one by one and kept preaching to an emptying room because he believed the Word was worth preaching regardless of who was listening?
He did not forget.
In Hebrews chapter 6, verse 10, Paul wrote this — God is not unjust. He will not forget your work and the love you have shown Him as you have helped His people and continue to help them.
He will not forget your work.
Not the work that got applause. Not the work that went viral. The work nobody saw. The work you did in the dark. The work you did when you were tired and nobody was watching and there was no reward coming and you did it anyway because it was the right thing to do.
That work is recorded.
I have sat with enough dying men and women in my fifty years to know what they think about at the end. And I want to tell you — not one of them lay there thinking about what the world owed them. Not one of them was bitter that their name was not on a building somewhere.
What they thought about was the people they loved. The prayers they prayed. The small faithful acts they had almost forgotten themselves.
Those are the things God remembers.
You are not on the wrong side of history. You are on the right side of eternity. And there is a difference between those two things that the world does not understand but that you have always known in your bones.
This community — the people reading this letter right now — you are the remnant. The ones who stayed awake when everyone else fell asleep. The ones who kept the faith when keeping it cost something. The ones who built something real with their hands and their prayers and their stubborn refusal to give up on what they knew was true.
God did not wake you up to the truth by accident. He chose you for this moment.
I believe that with everything I have.
Enjoy your weekend, friend. You have earned the rest.
With you in prayer,
Father Thomas
Before you go: many of you have been writing to me asking how to make sense of what is happening in this country right now. Why it feels like everything you built is under attack. Why the man you voted for keeps being targeted from every direction and yet keeps standing. I wrote something that answers that question directly from Scripture. It is called They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump. If you have not read it yet, this weekend is the right time.
This weekend I want you to do three things:
One. Think of one person in your life who built something quietly and was never thanked for it. Call them this weekend. You do not have to say much. Just tell them you see what they did. Those words cost nothing and mean everything.
Two. Read Hebrews chapter 11. It is called the Hall of Faith. It is a list of ordinary people who did extraordinary things in obscurity and were never properly recognised in their own lifetime. Read it slowly. You will recognise yourself in it.
Three. If you have been feeling like your life did not count for enough — write that feeling down on a piece of paper this weekend. Then write next to it: God kept a record. Put it somewhere you will see it next week.