My early years were spent where the old Roadside Mail Box was the only avenue for receiving messages. It was there long before the telephone link and it carried family news from around the world.
The mailman would deliver letters and newspapers to our Box down on the roadside, outside the gate to the house paddock. He would collect our outgoing letters out of the Box and take them back to the post office with him.
On a visit back to the area, I drove along the road where the old homestead once stood. There was nothing there now. The home was gone, the sheds were gone and even the old pine trees were gone. It was as though my family had never existed.
Yet, at the side of the road near the gate to the home paddock, were the remnants of the old Roadside Mail Box number 17. It was the last thing left standing. It was broken down and almost obliterated and was symbolic of all the fractured messages in the world. But enough was left for me to recognise it.
I imagined receiving a beautiful letter and put my hand in the old Box to get it out.
Please let me paraphrase for you the thoughts I found in Roadside Mail Box 17. “I am writing this with great joy because I have a message to pass on to you. It is a message that has always been known. In fact, it has been there all through history and I must share it with you. It is simply this: ‘that we should love one another.’ Signed, Your Father in Heaven.” You can find it too, in Roadside Mail Box number 1st John, chapter 1, verses 4 and 5 and chapter 3, verse 11.
Elizabeth Price