Write It Down!

The need for pencil and paper has almost become extinct in our modern digital age, has it not? I have embraced it for the most part, because I still can make digital lists and once done a task, I can still put a digital line through it. There is something within me that just enjoys the sense of accomplishment by crossing of items from a list!

Recent research has demonstrated that when we see something, hear something and then write it down, it triggers neuropathways in our brains that assist our ability to retain and remember the information we have encountered. So there are good reasons to write it down!

When Moses was preparing the wandering nation of Israel to go into the promised land and possess it, he under God’s direction gave an insightful instruction to the future kings of Israel. You may remember that Moses was going to pass away before entering the land and in preparation for the transition of leadership from him to Joshua, he records his word of remembrance in the last book of the Torah, Deuteronomy. The information in this book was not new. In fact, the title “Deuteronomy” literally means second law. Moses was repeating what God has already spoken some 40 years before when the young nation decided not to trust the Lord and ended up wandering around the desert until they passed on and their children had grown up.

Moses and the Lord anticipated that in the future, this new generation of Israel would want to be ruled by a king. So in anticipation of that desire, Moses records these significant words in Deuteronomy 17:18-20:

“And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.

It was Lord Acton (1887) who said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Is it not remarkable that several thousand years prior to Lord Acton’s astute observation about those who rise to power, Moses gave a specific instruction to “write it down” and “read in it all the days of his life” to avoid political elitism and spiritual arrogance? Certainly a king could have God’s law, captured in the ten commandments, read to him aloud or have a scribe write these flourishing truth down for him. No, God instructed that the king, himself, write God’s truth down for himself and to read what he wrote regularly to protect the power that was his from corrupting him.

As people of faith, we have the awesome opportunity to meditate on God’s word, the Bible. It truly is “a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path” ( Psalm 119:105). When the Holy Spirit causes the truth of God’s Word to stand out to you, write it down and read it over and over. Power has a way of tempting us to disregard the God we will all stand before someday and instead to think that we know better, know more, or have a much better way of living life that our Lord as outlined in His love letter to us!

Let me encourage you. Write His Word down and read it regularly! It is the pathway to living life according to the design of the Designer and the only of being prepared for the day that we breath our last and stand before our Creator and Savior!