REMINDED TO PRAY

If your “New Year Resolutions” include something about your prayer life, you might resonate with this idea: a home-made personalized prayer notebook. I wrote about this simple tool in my blog a dozen years ago. When I shared about it at subsequent women’s retreats, the half-dozen or so “prayer notebooks” I’d assembled (from thrift store finds) quickly disappeared from my speaker’s “book table.”

That experience suggested that this very simple, homemade plan for “remembering to pray” seemed to hit a felt need. Nothing fancy, truly homemade, my “prayer notebook” consists of a small six-ring planner (4 1/2x7”) with homemade dividers for each day of the week. It’s small enough to fit in the pocket of my Bible cover. 

Thanks to an era when purse-size planners (or more) were trendy for the organized woman, these little "planners" are now often found in thrift stores. My “version” had tabs for each day of the week, with pages (and photos) for folks I pray for, and a sticky note to update their prayer needs. On the tabbed divider facing the first page on that section I wrote down other reminders, like character qualities to pray to grow in my children and grandchildren. In the back are two more tabs. One, to help with private worship, is a growing alphabetical list of the praise-worthy names and character of God. The other is a list I call my “Jordan stones,” to remember times of extraordinary help and comfort from God.

My blog columns about the “prayer notebook” are all back there in the online “blog history”—accessible via the list at the right of this.  Go to the 2010 tab and find Sept. 27, 2010 (here’s the link: Jeanne Zornes: September 2010 ), then scroll up (that’s how they place the subsequent blogs). The blogs suggest things that may or may not work for you. But if something does help you in your prayer life, I will be grateful.

These days, when I sit down for my “quiet time,” I often find the lyrics or tunes to hymns running through my heart. One that frequently comes to me is “My Jesus, I love thee, I know Thou art mine.” If you have hymns in your spiritual heritage, the rest of this hymn’s words may come to you. You may not realize that the words—which include “for Thee all the follies of sin I resign”-- came from the heart of a teenager. Oh, that more of us, whatever our age, would be challenged by his example of expressing love to Jesus!  I wrote about  the young poet and the hymn here: Jeanne Zornes: JUST PTL (Psalm 146). His attitude of humility and expectation is what I desire, too, in seeking to love and trust Jesus.

Anything here helpful to you? I’d love feedback in the comments section below. Scripture tells us to “encourage one another” and this is one way that can happen.