If You Don't Write It Down...

Philemon 1:19

In a popular Tom Clancy novel, one of the characters continually jotted notes in a small notebook. "You have to get used to me," she said apologetically. "Whenever I have an idea, I write it down right away." It isn't safe, she explained, to entrust important matters to memory alone, adding, "If you don't write it down, then it never happened."1

Perhaps that's not literally true, but the point is valid. The written word is a powerful way of encouraging others. It can be anything from an ordinary note to a friend to an autobiographical account of your life and testimony for your children and descendants. When something is written, it achieves greater permanence in its effect. Some people keep precious messages of encouragement on their refrigerators for years, or inserted in their Bibles, or filed with their keepsakes. Even email and blogs are helpful in this regard, though nothing can quite replace ink on paper when the hand that is writing it is yours.

Who can you encourage with a written word today?

Share your stories with your children over and over. They need to hear them more than once in order to really remember them.
J. Darline Peipman, in her commentary on the Book of Ruth

1Tom Clancy, Debt of Honor (New York: Berkley, 1994), 581.