Writing to Remember by Natasha Woodcraft
Apparently, I'm not alone in this struggle.
The Verse Before the Famous One
Everyone knows Proverbs 3:5-6: 'Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding...' It's a go-to verse for many and was the basis for the ACW autumn competition that I'm sure you all entered (ahem). But have you noticed what comes right before it?
'Never let loyalty and faithfulness leave you. Tie them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart...' Proverbs 3:3, CSB
This is a command, not a suggestion. Never let loyalty and faithfulness leave us. These aren't just nice character traits to aspire to – they're characteristics of God himself. This is what our Father is like: loyal, faithful, steadfast in love. And we're called to emulate him, to become more like him.
God Knows We're Forgetful
But God knows us. He knows our propensity to forget. That's precisely why he doesn't just say 'be loyal and faithful' and leave it at that. He gives us a two-part action plan for remembering.
First: 'Tie them around your neck.' This refers to the ancient Israelite practice of wearing scripture – literally tying important words close to their bodies so they'd see them, feel them, remember them constantly. It's a bit like how we carry our phones everywhere now, isn't it? We wear them, essentially. Setting reminders on our phones has become our modern way of saying 'I need to keep this close, where I'll see it, or I'll forget.'
I have three alarms set on my phone every day to remind me to pick up my kids from their various schools. Three. Every day. I'm that bad at remembering! So I completely understand why God doesn't assume we'll remember. Setting alarms for prayer times and having verses pop up on your phone throughout the day is something many people do. Do you?
Even so, God knows that isn't enough.
Second: 'Write them on the tablet of your heart.' External reminders are good, but they're not sufficient. We need these truths inscribed internally, deep in the core of who we are. In a world that's increasingly busy, it's incredibly easy to believe the devil's lies – that God isn't who he says he is, that he's not faithful, not loyal, not steadfast in his love. And once we forget who God is, we're in dangerous territory. We are serving from our own well and not the overflow of the Spirit, and we can't be who we're called to be.
The Good News for Writers
However, writing can become a defence against that forgetting – against the enemy's lies about who God really is. Because we writers write things to remember them. It's a core part of our craft. We write to process, to understand, to make sense of things. And in that process, we remember.
When I sit down to write – whether it's fiction, a blog post or Bible journaling – I'm engaging in the very act God commands in Proverbs 3:3. The act of writing embeds truth more deeply than simply reading or hearing it.
But there's more to it than that. Writers are in a unique position to 'tie these truths around our necks' through what we create. Every story, article or book becomes a reminder – not just for us, but for our readers too. When we write about God's character, we're doing exactly what Proverbs 3:3 calls us to do: making it tangible, remembering it, keeping it close.
Think about it: the books that have shaped your faith weren't just information dumps. They were writers wrestling with truth, inscribing it on their hearts through the act of writing, and in doing so, creating something that helps you inscribe it on yours. I suspect they may have inspired you to write, too.
Write to Remember
So here's my encouragement: don't underestimate what happens when you write. Whether you're creating fiction, writing devotionals, crafting poetry or keeping a prayer journal, you're not just putting words on a page. You're binding truth around your neck. You're inscribing it on your heart.
And the next time you sit down to write something that touches on God's character, remember Proverbs 3:3. You're not just writing. You're remembering his loyalty and faithfulness, a loyalty and faithfulness that God calls us to emulate. In a world that's constantly trying to make us forget who God really is, that might be one of the most important things you do.
Natasha Woodcraft lives in a slightly crumbling farmhouse in Lincolnshire with her family of boys and menagerie of animals. She believes stories have power to communicate deep truth and transform lives. Her published novels explore God's redemptive purposes for ordinary, messy people living in biblical times. Natasha is also on the team at Broad Place Publishing.
Images courtesy of pixabay.com
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