Last week, I shared that a 2005 StatsCan study revealed 61 per cent of rural residents knew all of their neighbours, but only 16 per cent of those living in major urban centres did.

This isn’t terribly surprising.  Do you have a hard time remembering names in the first place?  I certainly do, even though I know I shouldn’t.  Sometimes I forget the moment someone tells me…I was too busy thinking about what to say next!

But names are important.  According to a Lifehacker blog post, “a person’s own name is the single most important word to him/her; it is intimately tied to his/her identity as an individual. How you deal with people’s names can have a profound effect on their impressions of you: Think about the times you’ve felt special when someone you admired addressed you by your name in a sincere tone; or think about the times when you’ve felt belittled when someone negligently called you by the wrong name, or worse, maliciously made fun of your name in front of you.”

But something so important is also so easily forgotten.  Sometimes it’s physiology, since “names are among the first things to go as our brains begin shrinking — by about half of one per cent annually — starting as early as our thirties.”

People come up with all kinds of strategies for remembering names.  Personally, I write the name down as soon as I can, since it helps me most to see the name in print somewhere.   It works for me, but maybe not you.

Question: How well do you remember names?  What strategies help you?

Ryan Sim - May 2, 2013

Thursday - Act On It - Pompous Prayer

This week is about the practice of prayer, and our motivations. We've seen this week how God says we can get what we want out of prayer. If we want to pray, wherever, however, to know and love God, then we can have that kind of relationship with him - it's offered to us. If we want to pray in public to impress people with our big words and religiosity, we can have their applause. But that’s it. I think every sitcom has an episode with a high school reunion, where someone scrambles to find the most beautiful, successful date possible to make everyone else jealous. Dating them because of what other people will think, rather than because they truly want to know and love the person. In the same way, we can try and use God, and the outward signs of a relationship with him, to try and impress others. But Jesus gives us an example of prayer, known as the Lord's Prayer He started it out with relationship being number one. He began with Our Father. Actually, he said, Abba, an Aramaic word like daddy. Here’s my paraphrase: Your name is holy. We want your kingdom to come to this earth, for your realm of heaven to be our realm. We trust you to provide for us now and forever, even though we rebelled against you in sin. Because of that you owe us nothing, we owe you everything, but you gave us everything instead. Help us to forgive others in the same way, and keep us from temptation to sin and rebel against you again, so we never stray into evil again, but remain in your light. Every line is a reflection back to him of God’s values and teachings…as we’ve seen them in Jesus. This is not a prayer telling God anything he doesn't know…trying to use or control God. It's not a prayer about how big our words are, or how many there are. It's about relationship… God I know you and what you care about, and want to know and care about the same things. That attitude is most apparent in the line, "Your will be done." Challenge: Pray, this prayer today, quietly, alone. The version in Matthew, might be slightly different from what you may have memorized in the past…but we’ll use it because it’s what we studied today. Start with the whole thing. Then go line by line, and pray to God about each line. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. (Matthew 6:9-13 ESV)

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