“Write It Down!”
July 9, 2022
My mother used to keep a writing tablet in the right side of the kitchen drawer that was closest to the phone. The tablet was used as a reminder for all the crucial things of our household life-groceries to be bought, appointments to be kept, tasks to be completed, and phone call messages to record, since this was the day and age before voice mail and answering machines. It was very conveniently positioned in the “heart of the kitchen”, or grand central station as my mother would often refer to her kitchen, but it was accessible to my entire family.
That tablet, which I can still envision in my mind, served us very well—no need to forget anything important—no need to have to remember or “carry” information in our heads as we could download it on the tablet. Similarly, my elementary teachers required that all students carry a black and white marble composition writing tablet that was reserved for the writing down of significant items such as homework to complete, projects to construct, and tests to take. Only those things that were the “heart of our education” were to be written upon the pages of that tablet, which was always to be accessible to the teacher to inspect. And that tablet, that I can still envision in my mind, served the students very well—no need to forget an important assignment or due date—no need to “carry” information in our heads as we could download it in the tablet.
In Proverbs 3:3, God’s recommended writing tablet is soft and far superior to the one in my mom’s kitchen drawer and to the marble composition book of elementary days. It is the “tablet of your heart” and it is reserved for remembering the extreme importance of kindness and truth. “Do not let kindness and truth leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.”
Writing these kindnesses and truth down on the “tablet of your heart” is a sure fire way of not forgetting what is the “heart of Christian living and loving”. And, hopefully, it is a tablet that is fully accessible to the living Christ and to others as a letter written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God. Is your heart soft and pliable and marked by kindness and truth? Do a quick heart check according to 2 Corinthians 3:2-3 and see what you find to write down and remember.
2 You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. 3 And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.