Do you know the first names of any of your great-grandparents? Unless one of your hobbies is genealogy, the answer is probably no. and yet they lived lives as full as ours. They went to school, married, and had children. Most of them worked at their various occupations for decades and played with infants who grew to become your parents. In all likelihood, your great grandparents were very much alive less than one hundred years ago. But after all their labors and all the seasons they saw come and go, what awareness is there now that they ever drew a breath? If you, the direct descendant of theses with people, do not even know their names, then it’s almost certain that no one knows them or anything else about the either. They may have lived for eighty years and not a trace of their lives remains.
That’s your life in less than one hundred years from today.
Despite the length of your life, all your hard work, all you’ve accumulated, and all you’ve done for and with your children and grandchildren, it’s unlikely that anyone will know anything about you in less than a thousand months from now- except for what you write.
To leave a trace of your life- that’s only one of many reasons to keep a journal. The people of God have kept written records of the works and ways of God in their lives since Bible times. The Bible itself contains some God-inspired journals. Many psalms are pages from the heart of King David’s personal spiritual journey with the Lord. The journal of the prophet Jeremiah’s feelings about the fall of Jerusalem we call the book of Lamentations.
Keeping a journal can be one of the most profitable and fruitful spiritual disciplines we ever practice. Among other things, it helps in self-understanding and evaluation, in meditating on the Lord and His Word, in expressing our deepest feelings to the Lord and in remembering His works in our lives. Journaling assists in creating and preserving a spiritual heritage, in clarifying and articulating insights and impressions, in monitoring goals and priorities and in maintaining the other spiritual disciplines. Besides the profit it brings to our spiritual health, recent medical studies indicate that journal keeping can even benefit our physical health.
However, some people imagine journaling to be more complicated than it is. In fact, it’s quite simple. Just write. Unlike some of the other spiritual disciplines, there’s no right or wrong way to keep a journal. The journal entries of some folks consist primarily of their reflections about events of the day. For others, mediations on Scripture dominate their pages. Still others fill the lines with prayers, poems, or a random combination of all the above.
Nothing says you have to write everyday or that you must include a certain number of lines. Journals can be handwritten, computer-generated, or even audio- or video-recorded.
The simplest way is best. It’s the one you’re the most likely to maintain over a lifetime to build a monument to God’s faithfulness. And long after you’ve made your last entry, it’s also the one most likely to introduce your great-grandchildren to your life and faith and to influence them for Christ sake.
-Donald S. Whitney: Simplify Your Spiritual Life-
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