What Are the Moral Lessons in “A Letter to God” by Gregorio Lopez?

“A Letter to God” by Gregorio Lopez captures moral lessons on faith, greed and appreciation. The reader sees a poor farmer who sends a letter to God after his crops have been destroyed. His prayer is for one hundred pesos in order to buy more seeds and support his family until the next crop grows. The post office receives the letter and reads it.

One of the themes within this story is faith. The man is very faithful in his prayer to God for the one hundred pesos. God answered his prayers through the post office clerks, who sympathized with the farmer and collected the money themselves. However, they were only able to collect sixty pesos.

The next theme revolves around greed and appreciation. The man receives the sixty pesos but writes another letter to God asking him to send the other forty pesos. He even goes so far as to claim the post office clerks have stolen the 40 pesos. Rather than be appreciative that he received the help at all, though it wasn’t everything he asked for, the man is ungrateful as he makes claims against the post office. He asks God to refrain from sending the remaining money through the post office.