What You Keep The Most Track of Says the Most About You: About Love, Records of Wrongs — or Counting Blessings
I keep track of the days.
Countdown of days left till Christmas. So many days till all the term papers are due to my prof for my doctorate of ministry program. Exact days till university-daughter comes in that porch door and is home for the holidays.
I keep track of all kinds of unruly numbers.
Track whatever you want to change trajectory.
Blood pressure numbers at the end of the day when I sit there at the chair by the window and just try to stay calm, so calm, waiting for the release of the pythoning pressure band around my upper arm and then for the numbers to finally flash up on the screen. Her heart rate on the oximeter when she says she can feel that arrhythmia pounding like horses across her chest. His sleep score versus my sleep score. Average number of steps at the end of every week because you’ve got to somehow gently keep moving to keep moving the stress through.
I just keep keeping track.
They say, sure, that’s good, and I’ve scrawled it down in a journal somewhere:
Track whatever you want to change trajectory.
“The world measures hyped productivity, while God records our sleepless nights and hidden pains“
And yeah, sure, I guess they have a point, and maybe it’s human nature to always keep tracking all the things.
Like even: The price of a Big Mac all around the planet. (Really?!) Or there’s The Museum of Failure tracks and records all kinds of failed products: Colgate lasagna (yeah, look, the point is that they tried and that’s what counts!) Crystal Pepsi ( mehhhh, but hey, it’s only a failure if you don’t learn and grow!), Harley-Davidson cologne. (No,yeah, just… no) And then, apparently, there’s a museum in Independence, Missouri, Leila’s Hair Museum, that has not just kept record of the hair of Abraham Lincoln, Elvis Presley, George Washington, Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson, but (ha!) garnered a question on Jeopardy on December 30th, 5 days after Christmas, back in 2016.
“What the world lifts high, heaven may set aside — and what the world may ignore, God may write in gold.“
Thank God, God Himself gets it:
God Himself keeps His own records of the numbers of hair on our heads (“Even the hairs of your head all numbered” (Matt 10:30), and He keeps records of every single tear that ever falls (“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” Ps. 56:8: The world measures hyped productivity, while God records our sleepless nights and hidden pains).
And God keeps His own records in His own books, His book of remembrance, (“A book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed His name” (Malachi 3:16) because our God records reverences that may never trend, and all the faithfulness that may never go viral, but instead heals and leads to wholeness (Mal. 3:16), and in His book of life, He records the actual name of every single individual who belongs to Him, so you get to wildly “rejoice that your names are written in (actual) heaven” (Luke 10:20).
Turns out?
We track for seen and measured results, while God looks for the secret and hidden and faithful that’s unseen. Earth’s obsessions rarely show up in heaven’s registries. What the world lifts high, heaven may set aside — and what the world may ignore, God may write in gold.
And while this whole, ole world keeps track and keeps score… God keeps tracking close to us, to literally bless us and keep us.
While I keep tracking things that I’m longing to change — the Love who is God, and never changes, never stops keeping track of my belonging.
I can’t say I was, in particular, thinking any of this when I sat near the back, beside a best friend of more than 3 decades, under the teaching of Beth Moore last week, scratching down notes in my journal, but it’s all I’ve been thinking about since Mrs. Beth leaned in and just laid it down for us all:
“All that will ultimately matter in the end, when you take your very last breath, and then come face to face with Love Himself – oh, Love has a face – and His name is Jesus – is that when we see Him, will there be anything actually far greater than Him saying, “Well, here’s my girl – and didn’t she love? Didn’t she just love so, so, so well?”
“You can either keep a running mental tally of others’ sins — or you can keep a running ledger of God’s loving mercies. “
I’m so moved in Spirit, that I don’t keep moving my pen across the page, but I let the Spirit move and hover over the depths of me:
Am I keeping account of the countless ways I can love — so I can be love in this old hurting world?
And then she reads the words, straight from the holy text: “Love keeps no records of wrongs. (1 Cor 13)”
Really? Even in wild days like these?
And the Spirit stirs over my interior stillness and maybe this is the invitation, maybe this could be the inner posture: I refuse to neither deny any injustices, nor to let any wrongs define my identity, or dominate my mind.
This is the work: Let go of the inner ledger that’s nursing wounds – to let there be space to still truthfully name sins, so there can be a healing of all injustices. Love always does this holy work:Report any abuse, and release all resentment.
Maybe:
The way we keep no record of wrongs is by refusing to let any evil become our personal focus…
And the way we stand against all evil is by refusing to let any denial become our public mask.
And the Holy Spirit’s not done with me, but moves even deeper within my spirit, and I slowly scratch it down, surrendering:
Whatever we may log as an accomplishment, God may log as a noisy clang if there’s actually no love.
Love for God means there is keeping a record— not of grievances, but of gifts and graces.
Isn’t that the daily choice I always have?
“Love for God means there is keeping a record— not of grievances, but of gifts and graces.“
You can either keep a running mental tally of others’ sins — or you can keep a running ledger of God’s loving mercies.
I glance down at the journal on my lap. Looping ink across page. Notes in margin. Swooping arrows. References and verses and quotes. But somewhere deep within us-– there are two recording journals in every human heart:
A Record of Wrongs: all the ways they’ve failed me…
and A Record of Love: all the ways His love’s saving me
Is there somewhere in my heart a Record of Wrongs Journal keeping track of: Rejection. Wounds. Distance and silence…. Dashed hopes… That comment. What they did, or didn’t say, or do. How this seems to be failing, and how that is going wrong, yet again. Scars. Betrayals… Disappointments.
Whatever you track the most often —- ends up saying the most about you.
What I didn’t know for a long time is that the truth is:
Whatever we track – can end up haunting and hunting us down.
Whatever numbers we think are important enough to track – add up to what is actually most important to us.
Whatever you track the most often —- ends up saying the most about you.
And whatever we keep an account of, is what we will end up being accountable for.
Is it time to let go of being a bookkeeper of others’ sins and failures and the Record of Wrongs Journal and turn it all over to God?
And it’s time to spend more time and attention on keeping the other record book, the Record of God’s Love Journal:God’s grace carried us here… God’s sustaining love is holding us here… this small blessing… this unexpected gift… this grace upon grace upon grace.
Is it time to keep a better ledge of all the ways His love is daily saving us?
Love keeps no records of wrongs, and those who belong to Love Himself are called to keep a record all the ways He Loves….Love keeps no records of wrong, but our love of Him has us always keeping a record of gifts:
“Love keeps no records of wrong, but our love of Him has us always keeping a record of gifts…”
Today, He loved me with a smile of a friend…
Today, He loved me with a gift of that little unexpected kindness…
Today, He loved me with a grace of this tender moment… and this little moment of loveliness… of His love.
Count all the ways He loves you – and you see there’s a love you can always count on especially when everything else is going wrong…
The mind always gets to choose: to keep a grievance list… or a gift list.
“When we forget not all His benefits – it’s our whole lives that benefit. “
The heart can keep track of all kinds of wrong – or the heart can commit to keep track of the goodness of God.
The mercy of this sunrise… the sound of their voice and the way laughing with them feels… wrapping hands around a steaming cup of warm… the gift of this moment of light dancing on the wall… the grace of this line of music… the gift of this truth, this promise, this hope…
When we forget not all His benefits – it’s our whole lives that benefit.
The mind always gets to choose: to keep a grievance list… or a gift list.
When I find a pen these days, and find myself keeping track of gifts and gratitudes, I find not just my truest self, as a Lover of God, but I find too this durable, steadying joy.
Keeping a list of gifts is this gift that keeps us.Keeps us going, keeps us sane, keeps us hoping, keeps us looking for love, His love… and we find ourselves surprised by love. And find ourselves surprisingly loved.
These are the days. I keep a pen close. I keep track of God.
Who always keeps tracking close.
When the ache feels like more than the heart can carry — try gently picking up a pen and looking for miracles and gifts of grace, even here, to count, all from a good and relentlessly loving God who draws near with grace upon grace in our heartache.
The Best Little Gratitude Journal for you — has spacious lines to name three miraculous gifts of grace each day, and is uniquely formatted to daily see how God has shown up with gifts on this day of the month, on all the previous months.
THIS GRATITUDE JOURNAL IS LIFE-CHANGING: Gifts & Gratitudes gently helps grow trust in a God who doesn’t always explain our suffering but who always enters into it with us.
When you don’t know what or who to count on tomorrow… if you start counting Gifts & Gratitudes — your eyes… and heart… begin to open to Who you can always count on…. especially on the hardest days.
What does the Christ-life really look like when your days are gritty, long — and sometimes even dark? How is God even here? My story of just that: One Thousand Gifts.
Are you ready to begin—or begin again—a life-changing habit of daily gratitude? Want to reset, refresh, reboot your life and literally rewire your brain? Be one of the more than 2 million people who have stepped into the life-change of this experience.
It’s only in the expression of gratitude for the tender, complicated life we already have, we discover miracles of grace in this same life . . . a life we can take, give thanks for, and break for others. We come to feel and know the impossible right down in our bones: we are wildly loved – by God.
Let’s end the year strong… Life is a miraculous gift and far too short to do anything but awaken to the miracles of grace in the midst of the brutally — to count all the ways you still are truly loved.