THEARTOFCHRIST — Issue 33: Journaling
The Days Are Numbered, and the Numbering Is Given
How Christ brings about life, and how He supplies it more abundantly.

Anchor: Teach Us to Number Our Days

The herald announces the sentence first, because the sentence is the whole lesson. Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom (Ps 90:12, paraphrase). The numbering is not something the man achieves. It is something he is taught. The Teacher is named before the pen is taken up.

The world reads journaling and builds a program around it. The diagnosis is counted: emotions unreleased, thoughts unexamined, insights unrecorded, goals untracked, days that slip past unexamined. The remedies follow the count: set aside a few minutes each day, find a quiet place, take up pen and paper, write whatever comes to mind, try drawing, try poetry, try a list of things to be thankful for, find the style that works best for you. None of the observations are false. The order is upside down.

A program built on writing the self treats the journal as a mirror the man polishes, and the man as both the writer and the judge of what is written. Every page becomes a test. Did I release the emotion? Did I gain the insight? Did I stay organized? Did I stay focused on my goals? The man who reads back a good week reads the pages as proof that his method worked. The man who reads back a bad week reads the pages as proof that his method failed. The life that was meant to be lived becomes an examination, and every entry becomes evidence entered for or against the accused.

Apart from Christ, the journal itself becomes ownership. The man is alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase), and so he appoints himself the author of his own story. He writes the day, he interprets the day, and he stands trial under the record. The creature whose days are numbered is given the job of numbering his own days, and the failure is read as a lack of method. Write more honestly. Reflect more deeply. Track more carefully. The verdict never changes, because the writer and the judge are the same man.

Scripture bears witness to how old this is. The connectors reveal the movement: the book is written, the days are numbered, and the wisdom comes last.

Write this as a memorial in a book (Ex 17:14, paraphrase). The command is given to Moses after a battle he did not win by his own hand. The writing is not a technique for self-discovery. It is a memorial — a record that the victory belonged to the Lord, set down so that the forgetting creature would remember what he did not do. The book is written because the man forgets, and the memorial stands against his forgetting.

Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it (Hab 2:2, paraphrase). The vision is not invented by the writer. It is given, and then written plainly, so that the reading itself moves the reader. The writing does not create the vision. The writing carries it, and the carrying is the service. A journal that invents its own vision writes a story the writer already owns, and the plainness is lost, because the writer is writing about himself to himself.

They feared the Lord and spoke with one another, and the Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before Him (Mal 3:16, paraphrase). The book of remembrance is not kept by the speakers. It is written before Him. The ones who spoke did not record themselves for their own improvement. They spoke to one another in the fear of the Lord, and the record was kept by Another. The journal kept in this order is not a mirror held up to the self. It is a speaking heard by the Lord, and the remembrance belongs to Him first.

So the days are numbered, and they are numbered in the right order. Teach us to number our days (Ps 90:12, paraphrase). The prayer is not a method. It is a confession: the days are not mine to count, and the counting must be taught. The man who numbers his own days counts them as possessions, and the count becomes an accusation — days wasted, days lost, days that did not add up. The man who is taught to number them receives the count as a gift, and the gift is what gives the heart of wisdom. The wisdom does not come from the writing. The wisdom comes from the Teacher, and the writing is where the taught man sets down what he was given.

The thread runs straight: the man cannot number his days, because the days were never his to count.

The answer is not a better journaling method. The answer is a Lord who keeps the book.

You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in Your bottle; are they not in Your book? (Ps 56:8, paraphrase). The counting is already done, and it is done by Another. The tears the man could not bear to record, the tossings he could not bring himself to write down, the nights he skipped the journal because the page would accuse him — all of them are already kept, already bottled, already written in a book that is not his. The man does not write to keep the record straight. The record is kept for him, and the keeping frees his hand.

Then comes the reversal of journaling, and it is a gift, not a technique. The journal itself is changed. The writing is no longer the man writing himself into being. It is the man setting down, in plain words, what the Lord has done and what the Lord has given, so that the forgetting creature remembers. The pen is not an instrument of self-authorship. It is an instrument of remembrance, and remembrance is the work of a creature who knows he forgets.

In Christ, the days are received, then recorded.

The man hears that his days are not a story to be authored but a gift to be numbered, and the hearing itself is the gift — God gives hearing, and God gives growth. The blank page, the week unrecorded, the entry that reads like an accusation, the day that went otherwise than written are all answered before the journal is opened: the Lord who keeps the book is the Teacher who numbers the days, and the man writes carefully because the count is already kept, not because his method has finally grown strong.

Writing carefully, in this order, is not a technique for becoming more self-aware. It is the shape of a man who trusts that the book is already kept. The few minutes set aside, the quiet place, the pen taken up, the day written down, the goals recorded — these are not proofs that the man owns his story. They are fruit, borne in the order grace set: Teacher first, numbering second, writing third.

The heart of the journal, in this order, is not the man's feelings about his feelings. It is the works of the Lord set down where the forgetting man can read them again. The man who writes only his emotions writes a record that changes with the weather of his heart, and the weather is a poor historian. The man who writes the Lord's doings writes a record that stands when the weather changes, and the standing is what teaches the heart wisdom.

Rest, in this order, belongs inside the journal rather than after it. The program that drives the man to record every feeling and calls it honesty has mistaken exposure for remembrance. The man who closes the journal on a day he cannot bear to write is not failing the method. He is living inside a book already kept, because the Keeper was named before his pen was taken up.

The days of our years are seventy, or eighty if we have strength, yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away (Ps 90:10, paraphrase). The brevity is not denied. It is placed. The days fly away whether they are written or not, and the writing does not slow them. What the writing does, in the order of grace, is set the brief days beside the Lord who outlasts them, so that the man who reads back his year reads not his own progress but the faithfulness that carried him through it.

Journaling Reaches the Body

Every topic in this workshop relates to physical life, and journaling is bodily through and through — the hand that holds the pen, the fingers that form the letters, the eyes that travel back over the page, the mouth that reads the entry aloud, the body that sits still long enough to set the day down. Christ supplies this life more abundantly (John 10:10, paraphrase), and the abundance is not a flawless record of examined days. It is a book already kept, showing itself in the body.

The world's program counts the journaling: the minutes set aside, the pages filled, the emotions released, the insights gained, the goals tracked, the days examined. Apart from Christ, the count is the verdict: the man who is alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase) treats even his own story as a work to master, and so his journal becomes another place where he is cut off from life.

In Christ, the sentence is reversed. The man numbers his days becomes the Lord teaches him to number them, and the reversal is not the man's achievement. The book was kept before he wrote, the tears were bottled before he recorded them, and the wisdom was given before he sought it. The man who receives the numbering does not wait for his method to grow strong. He has already been given a Teacher. The days are numbered. The writing is careful, not because the man has finally mastered his story, but because the grace that kept the book is training him to remember it.