Dear friends,
I have been putting this letter off for two years.
Every time I sat down to write it I found a reason to write something else instead. Another reflection on the news. Another passage of Scripture. Another observation about the world. All of it true. All of it useful I hope. And all of it easier than what I am about to write now.
But I am an old man. And old men who keep putting things off eventually run out of time to say them.
So here are the three things I want to say to you before I die.
The first thing is this.
You are not as alone as you feel.
I know that sounds simple. I know you have heard versions of it before. But I want you to hear it from a man who has read every message you have ever sent me. Who has sat with your grief and your fear and your anger at a world that seems to have moved on without you. Who has prayed over your names in the dark long after everyone else in his building has gone to sleep.
You write to me and you say things like I feel like I am the only one who sees what is happening. Or nobody in my family understands me anymore. Or I am tired of feeling crazy for believing what I believe.
I want to tell you something about that feeling.
I have written about the forces in this world that have tried to silence the things you believe. The institutions that called your faith dangerous. The politicians who called your values backwards. The media that spent ten years telling you that the man you trusted was finished. They tried to stop him. You know that story. You lived it with me.
But here is what they were really trying to stop. Not one man. You.
They wanted you to feel alone because a person who feels completely alone eventually stops speaking. Eventually puts their head down and decides that the cost of believing what they believe out loud is too high. They wanted you isolated and exhausted and certain that nobody else in the room saw what you were seeing.
In First Kings chapter 19 verse 14 Elijah said I am the only one left. And God said there are seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed.
You are not the only one left. There are seven thousand. There are seven million. And every single one of them feels exactly as alone as you do right now.
The second thing is this.
Your faith matters more than you know. Even when it does not feel like it.
I have watched people I love lose their faith in the last twenty years. Quietly. Without drama. The way a fire goes out when nobody puts any more wood on it. Not because they rejected God loudly. Because life got heavy and the world got loud and they got tired and nobody came alongside them in the specific moment when it mattered.
I do not want that to happen to you.
They tried to stop the faith of this country the same way they tried to stop that man. One institution at a time. One court ruling at a time. One generation of children taught to be ashamed of their belief before they were old enough to defend it.
They have not stopped it. I am the evidence. You are the evidence. The hundreds of thousands of people writing to me every week from their kitchen tables and their hospital waiting rooms and their car parks at the end of a long day are the evidence.
In Romans chapter 8 verse 38 Paul wrote this. Neither death nor life nor angels nor demons nor the present nor the future nor any powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God.
Nothing. The verse says nothing. Not the election result. Not the diagnosis. Not the child who stopped calling. Not the church that went quiet. Not the culture that mocks everything you believe. Not even the doubt that visits you at three in the morning when the house is quiet and the questions feel too heavy to carry.
They tried to stop that love from reaching you. They failed. They will always fail.
Keep the faith. Not because it is easy. Because it is true.
I want to place something in your hands here.
I wrote a guide that speaks directly to everything I have been describing. It is called They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump. It is about the forces that tried to stop this man, the Biblical pattern behind it, and what it means for you and for this country right now. I wrote it because I believed you needed something to return to when the news gets heavy and the doubt creeps in and you need to remember that what is happening is not chaos. It is a pattern. And the pattern is older than America. 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 third thing is this.
I am grateful for you. More than I know how to say.
I have been with the Church for fifty years and I have given my life to the people who came to me carrying things they could not carry alone. I have sat with the dying and the grieving and the frightened and the lost. I thought I knew what that work looked like.
And then I met you.
You write to me from living rooms and hospital waiting rooms and kitchen tables and car parks at the end of a long day. You tell me things you have never told anyone else. You share your fears and your hopes and your prayers and your grief with a man you have never met and may never meet. And you trust me with it.
I want you to know something about that trust. The people who tried to stop this country from believing what it has always believed were counting on you to eventually stop trusting anyone. To close the door. To decide that after everything you had been through there was nobody left worth opening up to.
You opened up anyway. Every week you come back. That is not a small thing. That is an act of faith in itself.
I do not take it lightly. I never have.
You gave me something in these years that I did not know I still needed. You reminded me that the work is not finished. That the hunger for God in ordinary people is not smaller than it was fifty years ago. It is just lonelier. And loneliness is something I understand how to sit with.
Thank you for letting me sit with yours.
I do not know how many years I have left at this desk. My hands are slower than they were. The mornings take a little longer to begin. But I want you to know that for as long as I am here I will be writing to you. Praying over you. Carrying the names you send me into the quiet before I sleep.
And when I am no longer here I want you to remember the three things I said today.
You are not alone. Your faith matters. And you are more loved than you know.
They tried to stop all of it. They did not succeed. And they never will.
God bless you. More than I can say.
With you in prayer always,
Father Thomas
This week I want you to do three things:
One. Read First Kings chapter 19 verses 9 through 18 this week. Pay attention to what God tells Elijah about the seven thousand he could not see. Let it remind you that you are never as alone as it feels.
Two. Write down Romans chapter 8 verse 38 and put it somewhere you will see it every day this week. Read it each morning before you read the news. Let it be louder than whatever the headlines say.
Three. Read They Tried To Stop Him this week: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
I wrote it for the person I described in this letter. I believe it belongs in your hands.
P.S. If you want to go deeper on anything I have written, everything is available at fatherthomasletters.com/products including The Signs Are Here, which maps today's headlines directly against the specific passages that described them, and the Father Thomas Prayer Card Collection, which many of you have told me you return to every morning. Take a look when you have a moment.