If you have worked in an administrative office or in a management position, you know all about paperwork. In my Navy musician days, most of my band mates had a collateral duty when we weren’t out performing. Every fleet band was self-contained; we had to purchase equipment and supplies, maintain a music library, make sure all our vehicles were serviced, etc. One of my collateral duties on a couple of occasions was Administrative Petty Officer. I had to keep files of all correspondence, personnel records, regulations, anything paper that had to go out with the Bandmaster’s signature. It was stressful. Chain of custody. “Paper trail.”

Did you know that God has left us a “paper trail”? Of course, it was first delivered via two stone tablets. From the earliest days of papyrus and scrolls, we have been given The Holy B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth). I hope you understand it as more than a huge list of dos and don’ts. It is ongoing, continuous story. It is God’s “love letter”. It is literally life-saving. Consider how this is so: a railroad worker finds a page from John’s Gospel, finds out where the nearest church is. A turn-around event. Or a person considering suicide in a hotel room until he opens the bedside drawer and sees a Bible placed by the Gideons. We grow spiritually even if we don’t have a specific event we can point to. The “paper trail” leads us to connect with God, to grow in His grace as we embrace the relationship He offers.

You can’t explain it. You just feel it. The world tries to pull wool over our eyes to blind us from the truth. Nothing is to be added or subtracted from it. Anything else may be helpful, but it is still supplemental. Even in trouble, woundedness, grief, and brokenness, we have a constant paper trail. In it there is unconditional love.

Pastor Art