I'm not renowned for my memory skills and this week I have had to result to writing notes to myself to remind myself to turn the hot water on if I don't want a cold bath! And if I'm honest, I can easily sit in Church on a Sunday morning, listen intently to the sermon and then two minutes later have no idea what was said, just that I quite liked it!
So this morning as I sat in chapel, enjoying prays, thinking to myself 'I really need to remember these', I didn't recollect that actually these were the prayers we said last Friday morning! D'oh!
This, however, links quite nicely with a conversation that was had in the pub last night, when one of my fellow students was recounting how in a ten-week placement he preached the same sermon at the beginning and end of the placement and none of the congregation had a clue. At this he thought he could conclude that actually nobody was listening and so why bother. But then when he pointed this out to the congregation, one of its members stood up and said "maybe we don't need to remember, the words were just meant for that point in time and they touched that moment".
Words might not always get remembered, but they can touch deeper parts of our souls. Sometimes we just need to hear words once, sometimes we need them repeated.
Obviously, sometimes we need to remember words, e.g. for exams. But it's nice to know that we don't have to always.
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