Letter to Brother Fabian

Dear Brother Fabian,
we men have a habit of missing the point. We forget to walk humbly with our God and to know our place. The Kingdom is not yet here and so we must walk in our mortality and as long as we do, we carry within ourselves the seeds of our own destruction. Made lower than the angels, and raised from our own sin by the divine Gift of God as manifest in the suffering of Jesus Christ, though we be children of God, we remain and wait for the blessed consummation of that event. It behooves us, therefore, brother, to remember and walk in humility and in the full knowledge of our frailty. Because it is a GIFT and not a right, we have no claims against God, though we be His children through faith. So being nothing, I remember myself and so remind myself that I cannot boast, accept in God my saviour. And that boast is none of myself but of HIM, for I was saved not by merit or by chance, but by His election and for His glory, as it is written "I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake." (1 John 2:12) and again in Psalm 106:8 "Nevertheless he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known."
You and I, Fabian, are nothing of ourselves. I count all things loss and cast any crown or title before the One who calls me Son, knowing how unworthy I am to hold such a name. I am not of myself, and you are not of yourself, yet we dwell here, in this weak tabernacle, and must rejoice or grieve in it while we yet live, knowing and trusting in the One who alone gives us life. I am convinced, then, that I have no right or purpose in boasting, only in humility.
Though I, like you, be a son, we are yet a sons by faith while in our flesh. One day, at the Glorious Consummation of the Age, we will yet be perfected and see in truth what we see only now by faith. Until then, I count any gain I have but loss and beg only for God's mercy, that it may abide upon me and that I may, in turn, see God's power manifest and rejoice fully in it. God bless.
Yours in Christ,
I.M. Ulysses.