Dear Jonathan,

I am writing this to you for a few different reasons really. But firstly I beg of you not to think I’m speaking out of place, in fact Jonathan, if I know you as well as I think I do I know you won’t. I have watched you at St Josephs. I have been trying to think about how many times. Hundreds. Thousands. From when we were boys and we sat together at the back of the church, to when you sat alone, me at the front. Your listening face, your eyes closed in prayer, poised and ready and so faithful.

You don’t know how hard this is for me to sit here and imagine how hard this is for you. I guess I wanted to write this letter so that you know that you are not alone. I probably shouldn’t be saying this but, well Jonathan, everyone’s faith is rattled. I can almost hear you retort there, telling me that in your Mary’s letter she said that there’s a better turn out than ever. But that, my dearest friend, is not what I mean. People come. They flock to the grounds of the church and from a distance, maybe even to each other, they look normal. But then they look at me, me reciting passages from the bible and they wait to feel some salvation. Some do but I look at the others and they look back at me with hollow eyes and I feel like they’re asking me why. They’re asking me how a good God, a great God, an almighty powerful God could let this atrocities happen and I’m starting to struggle to answer them sincerely.

I need to ask you, are you losing your God out there? I can imagine he’s even less present in the trenches than he is with lonely, penniless single mothers here. I guess I am writing you this letter because I’m conflicted. Maybe this is selfish of me to do. But we once were just too young boys, playing in a brook, no one could tell us apart and now you are so far removed from my world that I fear I will never get you back. So John, I ask you to not worry about losing God, he is there and will reappear to you when you least expect him to. What I need you to worry about is losing yourself. I don’t want you to come back with hollow eyes like the ones of my congregation. I can’t have you come back as a mindless numb piece of you. I want all of you back and most importantly, I want you to COME back. I hope I am reaching you John, I hope you’re still there, and fighting and being everything I know you are.

This was hard to write and harder to send but God bless you and come home safely.

Kind regards,

Wilfred

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