No matter what your age or how technically smart you are, you get caught away from your work center and someone on the phone says, “Let me give you your order number. Write this down.” You scramble in your purse or stretch across a table to find a writing implement and, hopefully, you find a piece of paper to write on instead of using your hand. I am reading a book The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. This intriguing story of the unfolding of the development of personal notebooks and their various uses travels from the 1200’s until today’s final step of adding a reminder on your phone. However, the two words that caught my attention were thinking and paper. When vellum was the recipient of ideas, the option of ordinary people keeping up with new information or ideas was not a possibility. The creation of paper and then the printing press led also to more people mastering reading and writing.
Even if you are an ultra-conservative environmentalist, save every tree person, paper is part of your life. Begin at the top and work down. You create on a computer and print out. Business letterheads and monogramed personal stationary make correspondence official or elegant. It’s nice to have a small spiral to write down info for maybe the stranger who asks the name of a special street. How would you identify sorted stacks without the ability to label with sticky notes?
Even if we don’t write it down, a message can be given and stick in our brain- or not. If the comment, “Don’t eat of this tree!” had been more than oral, would history have been changed? When we memorize names of states or ways to behave or favorite poems, we write those messages “on our hearts.” Paul made three journeys and wrote letters to be sure the message he brought was noted. Those epistles were only one copy passed around and read until a printing press and organizing a canon. To know what would really last, Paul counted on what was in the hearts of his listeners and how that would change their lives. Taking the message down correctly has been commanded from the beginning. What’s written on your heart?
Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds
Deuteronomy 11:18
Let Me Tell Ya 