Remember Remember

Today is the second and final day of the 'UK Open International Memory Championships' in London. [As I had to check back to their website three times just to get the competition title correct there is probably no point in me entering for next year's competition!]

Competitors will have to complete a number of memory challenges over the two days, and the one with the most points at the end wins. These challenges include things like having 30 minutes to remember a list of 1s and 0s (e.g. 0111010011001...). The winner of that particular task correctly remembered a list of 3620 1s and 0s. Other tasks include remembering names and faces, and quickest time to memorise a pack of playing cards.

Whilst we may struggle to remember what we did yesterday, or what we're supposed to be doing today, memory is important. Again and again the Bible encourages us to remember the things that God has done in the past - as that will shape our present and our future. Someone has said that Christianity is very simple, all you need is bread, wine, a memory and a vision. The bread and the wine remind us of Jesus' sacrificial death and the love and forgiveness of God. Jesus said to his disciples 'love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another'.

Some things are more important to remember than others. It is quite important to remember certain dates. It is quite important to remember names and faces. It is not so important to remember lists of 1s and 0s.

It is important to remember how much God loves us, and that he wants us to love others too.

Back Again

It's almost a month since my last blog - anyone would have thought that I was away on holiday...but now I'm back. Over the next week or so there will be pictures of the banner we made in Holiday Bible Club - for those of you who are waiting for that. There will be some thoughts on the last in our Sunday morning series looking at Hebrews. And there will be a few pictures from our summer holiday. And by the middle of September I will hopefully be able to update you on all R's test results from Great Ormond Street.

Holiday Club

Thursday - one day to go! Holiday Club has been great so far. We've had good fun, even if we could all sleep for a week! So here are a few pictures.

Each morning we have an 'aerobics' session with the Restaurant Cleaning Crew!

Creative prayer - on Monday we wrote on fish, yesterday we stuck our prayers onto a wooden cross, today we stuck red hearts onto clothes on a washing line. It has been great to read some of the things that the children are writing.

Today the children decorated squares for a church banner. This is the 'before' layout - come back next week to see the afterwards!

And just in case you're not worn out yet - clean forwards, clean backwards, clean forwards, clean backwards...

Boomerang

Today our 2010 Holiday Bible Club started, and we had a great time. The title of the club is Rocky's Plaice and throughout the week we are looking at stories from the life of Peter as recorded in the book of Acts.

Today we started with the Ascension (Acts 1) - the story of how, 40 days after the resurrection, Jesus went up into heaven, but with the promise that he would return again - hence the boomerang reference.

The keyword for the day is HOPE. And Christians live with this hope - that Jesus is coming back again one day. And this is not just some wishful thinking, but it is a sure and a certain hope, because God has promised, and God never breaks a promise.

The memory verse the children learned was from Psalm 145:13 - God is trustworthy in all he promises.

Maybe some photos tomorrow.