The value of writing things down

There may come a season when your life is so upended that complacent verities will get a shaking like those Christmas snow globes, and in the whirlpool you will find no place to touch on terra firma. But if the thought enters your mind to write down a few sure truths, do not resist the impulse. Remember, it is the devil who wants to keep everything muddled in your brain. God is the one who says:

“Come now, let us reason together …” (Isaiah 1:18).

And so, though I felt like a kid riding her bike with training wheels, I took paper and pen and jotted a few things I wanted to have before me all day long:

These are all precepts I know from the Bible You might recognize “Do the next thing” as a midrash of sorts on “sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34) or “Trust in the LORD and do good” (Psalm 37:3).

There is more I could have written, of course, but then one runs into the problem of non-compliance. I needed something clean and lean and that could fit on a 3-by-5 index card.

A friend emailed me the other day and asked, “How do you feel about resolutions?” I replied, “How do I feel about resolutions? I’m at the point of feeling that no one gets anywhere without them.” For how can we obey the Lord in things that we have not even thought through? And how can we seek the Lord with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength if our heads are full of mush? Obedience requires clarity, at the minimum.

In times of great stress, when circumstances are applying enormous pressure on hitherto untested creeds, your back is to the wall regarding faith: What is it that I really believe? Your back to the wall is not a bad place to be. As my husband often says, the main purpose of this time on earth is to let God create in us the character He wants us to take into heaven with us. So write things down if you have to, and then be sure to do them.

Andrée Seu Peterson’s Won’t Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, regularly $12.95, is now available from WORLD for only $5.95.