November 9, 2017 My dear Friends: I have this odd, abiding love for office supplies. It is likely the result of my first job being in an office supply store in Herndon, Virginia. When I was 15 and a sophomore in high school, I had gotten the job —my thought was to save up money for a car when I turned 16 in December. I learned a lot in my two or three months of working there: as soon as I would arrive, the owners would head to their backroom office and pull out a fifth of some kind of booze and start drinking. My much older co-workers instructed me on how to stay looking busy so that the (by then slightly inebriated) bosses didn’t come out to scream at me. But this job also introduced me to pens, which created in me a desire for nice pens like Mont Blancs or good fountain pens; highlighters, with a definite preference for yellow; and notebooks. Maybe that’s why I loved Moleskine when they first came out and why I love Field Notes now. Not only the fantasy of writing something profound in my handy-dandy notebook (will the notes that I take in my Field Notes be the beginning of some deep, profound treatise or work of art?), but even the aesthetic pleasure of the design of their product—it all appeals to me. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always loved the promise of Malachi 3:16-17. In the midst of God’s accusations against his people, he remembers his faithful remnant, those “who feared the Lord.” And he gives them a precious promise: “The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name. ‘They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.’” God, who can never forget because he is omniscient, tells us—“Just to reassure you, even though I won’t forget you: I’ll write it all down, your trust in me, your faithful love, your continued fear of me, your love for my name. And you will be my treasure—I won’t forget you, I promise.” He writes us in his book of remembrance in lines of indelible ink and reassures us that we are his. That’s better ink and a better book than anything I’ve ever come across. I’m grateful that God has written some lines in about me; aren’t you? In the grip of God’s grace,
Rev. Sean Michael Lucas, PhD Senior Pastor Independent Presbyterian Church Memphis, TN