Mission with Prophetic Power: The Journal of John Woolman (SRSC 12)

Resources for Application

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them again and again to notice God’s work even clearer. But nowadays, why must a journal be written ? What about keeping a regular recording of voice or video reflections that you can play back once every few months? What about creating a “my life” page on Google Docs where you place links, ideas, pictures and such that summarize your relationship with God during a given time period? What about using one of those “My Diary” apps? The possibilities are endless. The skill of writing was less common two thousand years ago than today, and the materials for writing were rarer still. And yet when one reads the book of Lamentations, one can feel Jeremiah processing the horrors of the conquering of Jerusalem and the exile of his people. The book of Nehemiah recounts the rebuilding of Jerusalem in the first person. It is his own story, and yet it is also his remembering the story before God. It ends with a prayer: “Remember me, O my God, for good” (Neh 13:31). Could Luke’s “we” portions of Acts—after chapter 15, where Luke begins to refer to those traveling with Paul as “we”—be based on Luke’s own journal of their travels? Christians throughout history have offered their own “hints in writing” of the work of God in their lives. Augustine of Hippo, North Africa (AD 354–430) wrote his well-known Confessions as a prayer of remembrance and reflection. 2 Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love are the earliest surviving writings in the English language by a woman. 3 Ignatius of Loyola recounts his 2 Augustine, Confessions , trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 3 Julian of Norwich, Julian of Norwich: Showings , trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (New York: Paulist Press, 1978).