A prayer list is just a list of people you refuse to forget.

What looks like a bit of paper is really a decision about memory. People fall off the edge of your attention constantly, not through coldness but because your week is loud and theirs is happening elsewhere. Writing a name down is a refusal to let that happen to somebody. It means that in a fortnight, when you have forgotten the conversation, the name will still be there asking you to remember the person.

Start one this week with four names on it. Keep it somewhere you actually look. Add the person you keep meaning to check on and have not.