First class mail
Emails and txt-messages - sometimes deep, often trivial, always instant, frequently deletable - dashed off like a postcard, but with no need of a stamp or a trip to the post-box. And better still, always carrying the potential for an intimate immediate reply. But letters? Who writes letters any more? (At least, not the personal ones - the kind you would love to open, and read, and savour, and re-read.) Letters are just not the way most of us do things.
For Paul, John, Peter and the other letter writers of the New Testament, it must have been a major effort; using carefully sharpened quills, with ink they probably made themselves, on parchment difficult to handle. Their letters were carefully carried for hundreds of miles, then circulated around small fellowships, and, to our abundant profit, kept, protected and copied carefully over the centuries. These are letters of loving concern and teaching written to groups of Christians, faithful brothers and sisters - the saints.
So, when we read them, let's do so in awe at their survival and appreciation of the care that went into them.
But there is another big difference between our systems of communication and theirs. We are, of course, great communicators, but our communications are mostly personal, individual, and one-to-one. Theirs were not primarily to encourage the isolated Christian. They were written to be read by everyone together, without even having been read first by the church leader on his own. They tell us how to be the people of God, gathered together and scattered in the world.
Reading Paul's letters, we learn together how to support each other in the grace and peace of the Father, so that we are better able to be his when we are apart. And we don't have to wait for the next courier to Ephesus to know how to support each other during the week - we can always send an email or text a message or two, maybe now.
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