Leave A Trace

 

I don’t recall when I first found my great grandmother Olivia’s Bible in a box of old books and photos, but it altered my heart.  As I carefully turned the fragile pages, the binding beginning to unravel, I noticed some pencil markings in the margin.  It indicated to me that Olivia did not just possess a Bible, she owned it.

On one page somewhere in the Old Testament, I deciphered her fading penciled words, “Praying today for the generations to come.”

And I realized when she prayed more than one hundred years earlier, that included me.

This tiny little faithful woman in the wilds of Kentucky left a trace.

Some answers to prayer take a long time.  I think somehow she knew that.

The blessing to me was that she had not just prayed, but she had written down those prayers.  Prayer takes on new dimensions when we step off the trail of praying silently in our hearts.  When we pray out loud with others, God shares His glory with more people than we can know.  When we write down our needs, praise, and coming before Him, God multiplies its effects not in answers, but through generations.

Underlining our prayers in ink permanently alters our chemistry.  It turns a verbal exercise into a tactile experience.  It allows us to pray differently.  As we pray, and as we write down our prayers, the Holy Spirit strengthens us and often changes the course of our prayers.  Pray one thing and the next comes to the surface.

A month or so ago, I came across a prayer journal from many years ago.  As I glanced through it, one incident for which I prayed reminded me that yes, it was as difficult as I remembered.  How hard it was.  How bleak it appeared.  How frightened I was. 

But lingering fear is not designed to defeat, but to keep us before Him.

Because those prayers were in writing, I realized how over time, God is not limited at all.  God redeems.  God has seamlessly woven something spectacular through what we may only grasp a glimpse.  Not a once and done “answer,” but God’s redeeming far beyond our lifetimes. 

Our memories of an event may diminish over time, but we are reshaped by praying.  Just as physical training equips us with muscle memory, prayer strengthens us and draws us ever toward Him.

All those notebooks and scraps of paper comprise not just a chronicle of God’s faithfulness for the next generation, but a narrative for those who surround us that God is real.  Over and over, this story that never ends is not about us, but declares to others that “this is God.”

So grateful that the prayers of ordinary men and women throughout Scripture were recorded as a witness of His Presence.  Behold, God is my helper; the LORD is the upholder of my life.  Psalm 54.4.  Indeed, the book of Psalms is a treasury of prayers.

Writing down our prayers does not hold God accountable to us, but for us to respond to Him.  We write down the cries of our hearts, our concerns, and our fears.  And the resulting joy is seeing how God unfolds His glory in it.  Most often beyond what we can imagine.   

God listens.  God responds.  God multiplies.  God redeems.   When we pray, what emerges is not just a good story, but incredible, seemingly unrelated sacred designs that converge throughout eternity.

Write it down.  Pray a little differently. It doesn’t change God.  But it just may change us.  And it may encourage someone else who may be reading those prayers a hundred years from now.

Leave a trace.