“Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart.”
―Proverbs 4:21
I remembered it like it was yesterday.
It was 2016, it was Sunday and it was early-time for my weekly “prayer call” with my dad.
This was a weekly ritual began after my dad retired.
Each Sunday on my drive to church I’d check in with dad and we’d pray together concerning the worship services I was involved in.
After almost two decades of these calls, this was going to be one of the last of these calls.
I knew it was coming and listened much more closely to what my dad had to say than I had in earlier years.
Before praying for me, dad said:
“Son, you can always trust Jesus.”
And then, after the prayer he said goodbye with these words: “Keep looking up! Our redemption draweth nigh.”
I’m sure I have heard my dad say that last phrase over a thousand times in my life (probably thousands of times).
But I haven’t heard my dad say them in a long time. Dad, suffering from dementia, seldom talks anymore.
Even back in 2016 he had already started on that tough journey with dementia and I treasured every Sunday call for I knew that they’d not last forever and I didn’t want to forget.
So…
I typed it down. I added that precious moment to my coveted “quotation file” that I have been updating almost daily for years.
When I read dad’s quotes this morning I was ever so glad I did.
The ONE THING for today: There are some things so important that you do not want to forget. And then there are some things so valuable and so treasured, that you must not forget. Develop systems to make sure that you don’t.
A good place to start is to journal every day (and go back and read your entries) and to keep a quotation file for recording things others said or wrote that you do not want to forget.
Two Systems for Remembering:
A personal journal
A personal journal of what other’s said.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
The ONE THING 