Tracking the miracles

There are large and small miracles happening in your life every day.  Especially if you are having a hard time, you need to keep track of them somewhere. And if you have children in your life, a fun project is to use a recipe-type file box or notebook with dividers, to have everybody be on the lookout for God at work in your lives. Otherwise, it's much too easy to overlook, take for granted, and otherwise forget what our generous God is doing for us.


Several years ago, one of my dearest friends was murdered. I was with her daughter, in the house where she had been murdered, as we had only a few days to sort through her files to find important family documents. How surprised I was to find a folder full of articles, letters, cards, and notes she'd saved over the years.


Busy though I was under those terrible circumstances, I was forced to stop  and take the time to look at this file, because it became clear that I'd found her stash of treasures. These were mementos of thank you's and love notes, praises for jobs she'd done well. She mentioned this file to me once or twice.  She had  made a place where she could see God's hand at work in her life for the days when she felt defeated and broken.


A little jewel in this stash was a note I'd written her years before about a loving gift she had given me, a note I'd long forgotten but that she had saved for the days she needed a lift from her Encouragement File. What an honor to be in her Hall of Fame, to know my words about our friendship could lift her spirits!


Why not start your own encouragement file?  Why not start keeping your own inventory of what God has done and continues to do in your life?  Write or keep reminders of what he has done, to spur your memory, then put it where you can bring it back to your remembrance on your blue days?


If you don't have the energy to file or categorize right now, a shoe box or large envelope will hold index cards, photos, greeting cards, slips of paper that you can save for those rainy days.


If Santa can have a list and check it twice, why can't we have a list of what God has done for us?


O Lord my God, you have done many miracles for us. Your plans for us are too numerous to list. If I tried to recite all your wonderful deeds, I would never come to the end of them.

Psalm 40:5