Write It Down

 

We are a couple of weeks past new year resolutions, and this concept has been around for millennia. I remember from a Tom Clancy book: if it isn't written down, it didn't happen. I don't write stuff down often enough. In this new digital/verbal age, I don't even say it enough in front of Alexa! Though it is best to watch what you say around the Echo.

We are fortunate enough that Moses - and probably many before him - wrote stuff down. Definitely those after him did, and I am personally very thankful that Judaism had so many over the millennia who wrote down what God said to specific individuals.

I appreciate the gospel writers, too, and those who wrote letters to new churches as they grew in the years following Jesus' resurrection. A couple of them were very open about why they were writing:

And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. (John 20:30-31 KJV)

The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: (Acts 1:1-3 KJV)

The gospel of John is one that presents Jesus as the Son of God. Oh, the other three do,  too.  I love the second chapter of Luke. There is nothing that tells us that Luke spoke with Mary, but so much in his first two chapters that could have come while sitting down with Mary and hearing her own story. In the third verse, he mentions Theophilus, as he does in the first verse in Acts. I would like to think every true Christian is a "friend of God," which is what Theophilus means. 

I wonder how many people it would take to write down the Bible from memory - my ability is lessening as I age. There are a few specific verses I could write down - but there are literally thousands I have written over the last few years. Some are verses I've carefully copied from online Bibles. I don't trust my own typing or proofreading.

Why do I write these verses down and write my thoughts around them? Because I wasn't called elsewhere, and though I am involved in a wide range of outreaching programs, I do believe Matthew was inspisred to write this down for all Christians - all followers of Christ:

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:19-20 KJV)

I know what I write is read as far away as Australia, the Netherlands, Korea, which is the only way I can go to teach all nations that:

That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:15 KJV)