Encore

216 years ago this Sunday, Thomas Jefferson wrote a long letter to George Washington from Paris. The letter covers everything from foreign affairs (from Turkey to Sweden), to possible markets for American rice. It is filled with the facts, figures, gossip, and intrigue one would hope a cultivated insider like Jefferson would provide to our new nation. And yet, there is a real sense that he is the one away from the action. The Constitution is in the process of being ratified. Washington is still a few months away from becoming our first president. The course of the nation is being set, but he is in Paris, away from these activities, dependant on dispatches from Madison and Monroe. There is a line at the end which, although understated and restrained, communicates the loss he feels at being away.

"I hope therefore the pleasure of personal conferences with you….of getting my own ideas set to rights by a communication of your, and of taking again the sentiment of my own country which we loose in some degree after a certain absence."

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but it also makes you feel more distant, more challenged to communicate, to be able to speak the language of home as well as you used to. Paul certainly felt a measure of this pinch when he wrote to the Corinthians after an extended absence (II Corinthians 1.12-2.4, 10) and Thessalonica (I Thessalonians 3.1-10).

So also do we.