His nerves unraveled from overwork, a pastor approached a therapist for help. The doctor gave a simple prescription: “For the next week, cut your fourteen-hour workday to eight hours, sleep eight hours, and spend the remaining eight hours every day in the study, quiet and alone.”
The pastor complied. After a shortened workday, he retired to his study for several hours, playing Mozart at the piano and reading Hermann Hesse. He followed the routine the next day. The following day, he returned to his counselor, complaining that the remedy had not helped. He felt as frayed as ever.
“But you don’t understand!” the doctor said. “I didn’t want you with Hermann Hesse or Mozart; I wanted you to be all alone with yourself.”
“But I can’t think of any worse company!” complained the pastor.
“Ah,” came the reply, “and yet this is the self you would inflict on people fourteen hours a day.”
Okay, it’s just a story. But most of us know how our time for reflection and quiet shrinks amid committee meetings and sermon outlines. The hurried and harried self we share with others may not be one we care to know.
As a pastor, I have wondered how I might avoid that trap. In recent years, I’ve grown into a discipline that has made a difference: every few days, log life’s struggles and discoveries in a journal. It has sharpened my pastoral focus.
Learning from the past
One of the journal’s simplest benefits: remembering and learning from the past.
“To remember” in the Bible is not to dwell dreamily on “the good old days” but to recall the presence of God in our pasts. That is particularly vital when the God of Monday morning seems momentarily distant or his activity hard to fathom. Writing (and later reading) a journal is a disciplined form of remembering the God who has graced our lives and guided our service.
” ‘I’ll never forget this idea’ is the Devil’s whisper,” author Richard Bach counsels fledgling writers tempted to dispense with writing notebooks. That also rings true as memories of God’s faithfulness grow fuzzy.
Often I have returned to an entry from a February day now seven years ago. Driving to a hospital for a routine pastoral call, I found my longing for a breakthrough in my prayer life dramatically answered. The encounter lives in my memory more vividly for having been recorded and saved.
Listening to the present
Keeping a journal also enables me to listen to the present. Sometimes the very act of writing about a program idea that fizzles or a prayer that gets answered helps me see things more clearly.
Not long ago I took a morning walk and reflected on Paul’s word in Philippians, “Do not be anxious about anything.” An awareness dawned, and I wrote in my journal: “Today I had a glimpse-just a glimpse-of what life would be like if I believed to the core of my being that God could take care of my every need. I had a shiver of knowing that God can be trusted in my finances and in my career.” Writing it reinforced something important God was trying to say. It became a way of listening. Events in my ministry have too often spoken with an eloquence I might have missed without the discipline of journal writing.
(Keeping my journal in a smaller, half-sheet-sized three-ring binder makes it easy to carry paper with me to record such impressions before they’re lost.)
Becoming open to the future
Keeping a journal also opens me to God’s leadings for my future. Reviewing entries can help us discern the steady pressure of God’s directing Spirit. Leafing through my journal recently, I noticed how many times I mentioned my desire to minister through writing. I also saw that the nurturing of spiritual life in others grows increasingly attractive to me. Seeing patterns like these helps me move more confidently into the future God is shaping.
As my journey with God continues, I expect my journal to be a companion and guide.
-Timothy K. Jones
Communion Fellowship
Goshen, Indiana
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