Two hands

One brown hand is wrinkled and worn. The other, visibly more youthful. Beneath them, an old spiral notebook. Grocery-store quality. A dollar forty-nine, plus tax, on sale. No expensive leather binding or intricately designed, acid-free paper. Just a fourth-grade composition book with wide-ruled lined sheets and a plastic-coated cover.

And yet within these pages are the vast treasures of a living legacy. These two hands—older and younger—belong to a grandmother and her granddaughter. And the journal contains a grandmother’s prayer requests—written out and prayed over during her daily appointment with Jesus.

One day, when the subject of prayer came up between them, the younger asked the older why she wrote down her prayers in a notebook like that. There was silence while the answer took shape. Then came this simple response: “So I won’t forget.” 

Your words don’t have to be written in paragraphs or poetic prose. Bullet pointed requests and then brief follow-up notes of God’s answers to them will work just fine. The intentionality and strategy of your prayer life will heighten if it is recorded on paper.

Yes, those hands belong to my maternal grandmother and me. My name is written in that spiral notebook of hers. She prayed for me since before I was born, asking God to gird and strengthen us, to guide and sustain us. And her persistence and consistency in prayer has changed the trajectory of our family’s life and legacy. I wonder what the record of your prayers and mine will accomplish.

Time will tell. So, let’s write it down to ensure that we’ll never forget.