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 - January 27, 2014

Monday - A New Idea - Reset Time

Reset

We’re recently started a new series called “reset”. In the first week, we talked about how Jesus makes it possible to reset all of life, giving us a fresh start in life that impacts every key area. We’re going to look at many of these in depth, and this week we see how Jesus resets our use of time. There was a time in my life when I prided myself on never needing a day planner. I remembered everything I signed up for, and never double booked. That was high school. Ever since, I’ve found my time needed to be managed. Through university, I started to rely on a day planner, an old fashioned spiral bound book. I got progressively busier, but could still say yes to pretty much anything I wanted. I would stay up all night getting things done if I needed to. I was young. By the time I started working, I had to start making choices. I can only be in one meeting, one event, or one place at a time. When I first pastored a church, I was still working as a paramedic on the side, until I finally realized I simply didn’t have the time to do both things well. And still today, I find myself constantly choosing between demands on my time. It’s only escalated since having children. I can go on. You probably can, too. Bottom line, unless we’re still kids, time is all about choices. It’s a limited resource – we can’t create it, we can only choose how to use it. The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. ~C.S. Lewis But what if you could reset your clock? That used to be easy – whenever I’ve started a new job, I feel like it’s a chance to structure my time differently, within the constraints of set tasks, family and personal responsibilities. But even then, it’s never clear what’s best. Read one thing that says “say yes to every invitation, you never know who you’ll meet” but then I’ll read something else that says I should learn to say “no” to more invitations to protect my sanity and family. Which is it? With an extra hour, I don’t know whether I should work more, play with my kids, read the Bible, exercise, fix things around the house, or what. Someone will advocate that each one is most important. Time marches on. Closely connected with goals, last week’s topic. Question: What would you do with an extra hour in the day? Why? What would be your goal?

From Series: "Reset"

When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again? The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate. What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives: Reset: Goals Reset: Time Reset: Money Reset: Work Reset: Body & Food Reset: Sex & Marriage Reset: Family Reset: Compassion Reset: Nature Reset: Society Reset: Death Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.

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