Letters to the Editor: September 2026
Readers respond to recent articles with appreciation, questions, reflections, and further conversation with the editor.
Read Time: 3 minutes
Regarding the article Habits of Grace:
Thank you Belinda for your wonderful ideas in this article. I’m glad to see you included visual, auditory, and multisensory ways to build on grace. I use “Magnify Him Together” for many different activities and encourage others to use it.
I really like what you said about strengthening our ecclesias. Even doing chores and keeping everything looking as if we expect Jesus to come and join us is important. There are all kinds of duties that need to be done and when everyone shares in preparing everything, there is a feeling of contentment. Prayer is important when someone takes their name off of everything, not realizing it’s for the love of our creator that we take our turn.
You certainly gave us all lots of ideas to try. May your article be read and have influence on the things that are most important to the way we live.
Barbara Abel, Barrie Ecclesia, ON
Regarding the article Out Like A Light:
Beautiful story, thanks Jim. I have been a member of the Christadelphians for over 50 years; I live in Australia and grew up listening to and knowing bro. John Martin. We look forward to spending eternity with our brethren and sisters raised to life when our Lord returns.
Ross Hyndman, Golden Grove Ecclesia, SA
This is a wonderful testimony to the incredible lengths God goes to get our attention, and how suffering (insomnia) can be used for God’s good plan. Nothing is wasted with our good Father. Thanks be to Jesus our savior.
Hannah Shaw, South Brisbane Ecclesia, QLD
Like Tom, my talks are also a great cure for insomnia. I was once giving an exhortation, and to my surprise, amidst the closed eyes and loud snores was a pair of bright eyes, obviously paying attention. After the meeting, I had a chat with the young lady visiting with her family from another ecclesia, and we have now been married nearly 35 years.
John Warr, Coffs Harbor Ecclesia, NSW
Regarding the article The Tragedy of Eli
Interesting how Samuel followed right in Eli’s footsteps. He seemed to guide the people righteously yet had the same issues with his sons as Eli had with Phinehas and Hopni (1 Samuel 8).
Tricia Guy, Reseda Ecclesia, CA
Thank you, Tricia—that is exactly the detail the record wants us to notice, and it is a sobering one. Samuel was raised in Eli’s household, watched the whole tragedy unfold, and was himself the instrument God used to announce the judgment on that house. If anyone should have been inoculated against the failure, it was him. Yet 1 Samuel 8:3 tells us his sons “did not walk in his ways; they turned aside after dishonest gain, took bribes, and perverted justice.”
Notice too how closely the language tracks: the people complained to Eli about his sons (1 Samuel 2:23), and the elders came to Samuel with the same complaint about his (1 Samuel 8:4-5). And Samuel had already appointed them judges over Israel despite their character—which is uncomfortably close to Eli leaving Hophni and Phinehas in office. Both men seem to have been about the same age when it happened.
Two lessons strike me. First, seeing a failure clearly in someone else is no protection against repeating it ourselves; hindsight is not the same thing as character. Second, the example we live under has a longer reach than we imagine—it can lie dormant for forty or fifty years and surface when we are old and tired and the confrontation feels too costly. Samuel’s public ministry was faithful to the end. It was the private, familial sphere where the old pattern reasserted itself.
David Fraser, Pinetown Ecclesia, South Africa
This is today. It’s happening in ecclesias worldwide. Every baptized brother and sister, and especially arranging boards, should read this article and take heed.
Joann Fisher, Reseda Ecclesia, CA
Thank you, Joann. I understand the concern, and I share it—the risk is real. But if I may add one thought, because it is the thing I had to keep reminding myself of while writing.
The moment this account becomes a description of other people—other arranging brethren, other ecclesias—it has stopped doing its work. Eli was, by every outward measure, one of the good ones. Forty years a judge in Israel, a man who reverenced God, who trained Samuel faithfully, whose heart trembled for the ark of God (1 Samuel 4:13). He was not a scoundrel. That is precisely why his failure is so alarming. The article is dangerous reading only if we finish it thinking of someone else.
So, my hope is that each of us reads it with one question: where am I saying words for the sake of saying words? Where am I benefiting, even in small ways—in standing, in a quiet life, in avoiding an awkward conversation—from something I know ought to be addressed? Eli’s condemnation was not that he approved of his sons. It was that he “frowned not” upon them (1 Samuel 3:13, margin), and that his rebuke cost him nothing.
That uncomfortable question belongs to all of us, whether or not we hold any ecclesial office.
David Fraser, Pinetown Ecclesia, South Africa