Housesitter

The details of this letter will be understood best by folk in the UK who watch a TV soap called Eastenders but I have never watched it myself and the letter still moved me.

The letter is written by my good friend Dr John Dempster and was published in the Highland Group of Newspapers where he has a regualr weekly column called Christian Viewpoint.

It is reproduced with his permission.
A Letter to Dot

I haven’t ever written to a character in a soap before, but after I listened to Dot Branning, the Bible-quoting Christian on Eastenders pouring out her heart last Thursday, I just had to get in touch with her. Dot’s husband Jim is in hospital following a stroke, and on the medics’ suggestion, she was recording a tape for him to listen to on the ward. Anyway, here’s what I wrote:

Dear Dot,
Listening to you the other night, I was moved by your honesty about your loneliness and the pain you’ve suffered over the years. I was also moved when you said that all you have left is the hope, based on the Bible’s teaching, that there’s something better to come in the life beyond.

A couple of things came to mind when you said that. First of all, the reason we can trust the Bible’s promises is because of the person who speaks to us through it. Our confidence as Christians isn’t simply in a wise old book, but in Himself – the real, living God. And secondly, I believe God offers hope not just for the future, but hope for now, hope for today.

Listening to you, I wondered how fully you’ve realised that the message at the heart of the Bible applies to you too. God loves you, Dot, absolutely and unshakably. God has always loved you.

When you were a child, evacuated from London during the War to stay in rural Wales with the couple you called Aunty Gwen and Uncle Will, God loved you. That ‘perfect day’ you spoke about – blue sky, birdsong, Gwen’s smile in the kitchen at breakfast, the sense of wholeness and belonging you felt as you lay in the field toasting in the sun. God was with you, Dot, rejoicing in your joy.

When Will lay on your bed at night-time, and you put your head on his chest, and he called you his ‘pearl’ and sang ‘Pretty Baby’, God was there, loving you more than Will ever could, his love reflected faintly through Will’s words.

God has loved you and been with you in your pain too, Dot – the sadness of your return to London, the torturing guilt that you’d been responsible for Will’s death, the loss of your first husband Charlie, and your grandson, and your friend Pauline, and your agony about whether to help Ethel take the fatal dose of morphine tablets when she was terminally ill.

If there is any truth in Christianity, then you are God’s pearl – do you remember that story Jesus told about the jewel-merchant who found one amazing pearl and went and sold all he had in order to be able to afford it? That pearl is you, Dot. And in a deep sense, you are God’s ‘pretty baby’ with the potential for a greater loveliness than you can ever imagine.

I’m sorry you haven’t met more Christians able, like Gwen and Will did, to reflect into your life just a little of the love of God. You admitted to Jim that you aren’t always the easiest of women to be around – ‘I have my ways’ you said. There does seem occasionally to be a harshness and judgementalism about your Christianity. I guess like all of us, you need to change and keep on changing, increasingly learning the way of love.

I just wonder if you’re making the right decision about not having Jim back home when he’s released from hospital. It’s not really for me to say – you alone know how exhausted you are. You mention that Jim is not a believer, and you will realise that if he persistently shuts God out of his life, he can’t share your hope of being in the better place God has promised after death. That, as you know, is the serious warning Christianity gives us.

Jim now needs more than ever to see God’s love, and I wonder if you could be the person to open his eyes to it. I wonder whether, if you can learn to appreciate more deeply God’s love for you, you will find grace to reflect to Jim God’s love for him in a costly, self-giving way.

You mentioned, very honestly and movingly, that while you could cope with losing Jim, it would be difficult for you to have him home in his present condition – you feel he’d be ‘here but not here.’ I think the pain you imagine feeling in that situation helps us understand God’s pain as he sees us ignoring him – here, but not open to him, not here to him.

I trust you and Jim will discover more of the wonder of God’s love for you, and that both of you, increasingly, may not be simply ‘here’ but ‘here to God.’

With love,
John

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Ray
Enjoy a rent free holiday with
Christian House Sitters
www.christian-housesitters.com

Born2LoveYou

Wow! Thanks for sharing that Ray!
I am a fan of Eastenders.

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