Like a personal letter, a journal tends to be informal, direct, and spontaneous. Someone keeping a journal quickly jots down thoughts and impressions and then moves on to the next day. And when someone shares his journal with us, we have the feeling of traveling with the writer. We feel the immediacy of what the writer is seeing. We share in his first impressions of people and places. And, most important of all, we see something of what he felt the need to pray about and why.
During the seven months when her twenty-one-year-old son was serving in the coalition forces during last year's war in the Persian Gulf, Shirley Buckner made notes of what she was thinking about and how she prayed. The following excerpts tell of her growing trust in God and her deepening assurance of His omnipresence and goodness.
I need Truth every moment. Our son is stationed just opposite Iraqi bunkers on the southern border of Kuwait; at night they can see the Iraqis playing games. When the moments seem heavy with fear for my son's safety, I sometimes walk around the room praying and reading aloud. I hold to the fact that man is God's immortal idea, incorporeal, spiritual, eternal.
