Margaret Thatcher’s Heartwarming Letter to a 9-Year-Old Boy

“However good we try to be, we can never be as kind, gentle and wise as Jesus. There will be times when we do or say something we wish we hadn’t done and we shall be sorry and try not to do it again.  We do our best but our best is not as good as his daily life.  “If you and I were to paint a picture, it wouldn’t be as good as the picture of great artists. So our lives can’t be as good as the life of Jesus.”

That’s the message British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent in response to a question from an earnest little boy in April 1980.  David Liddelow was only nine years old when he wrote to the Iron Lady,

“Last night when we were saying prayers, my daddy said everyone has done wrong things except Jesus.  I said I don’t think you have done bad things because you are the Prime Minister.  Am I right or is my daddy?”

Thatcher responded honestly, admitting that she shared the weakness of all mankind:

“As Prime Minister I try very hard to do things right; and because Jesus gave us a perfect example, I try even harder.  But your father is right in saying that we can never be perfect as he was.”

The Right Reverend Richard Chartres, preaching the homily during Mrs. Thatcher’s April 17 funeral in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, read that letter as an example of her ability to reach out to the young and to those not always deemed “important”.

But the letter says more about her faith, according to WorldNetDaily:

But it also gives a glimpse of her personal religious faith, grounded in the Methodism of her parents.

She spoke of constantly striving to live up to an ideal and “trying even harder” to follow the “perfect example” she said she found in Jesus.

Its tone contrasts dramatically with that adopted by other politicians, summed up by Tony Blair’s chief Downing Street spin doctor Alastair Campbell years later when he said:  “We don’t do God.”

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