Lessons from Forest Gump

A few years ago, one of the year's biggest movies was "Forest Gump." Actor Tom Hanks played the role of a handicapped man whose mother believed in him to the extent that he was willing to try anything. He would often quote one of his mother’s favourite lines. "My mother says,  ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.’”

Today, I suggest that life is like a box of chocolates, not because we never know what we will get, though that may be true, but for another reason altogether. We have all noticed that foods that no one likes in the family do not get eaten quickly. When we open sweets around my house, they will be gone quickly. However, we could open a jar of marmite, and it would last a long time because no one is eager to eat it. That is the lesson that I want us to focus on today. Life is like a box of chocolates; it never lasts very long.

They wouldn’t believe him!

Late on the night of the 14^th of April 1912, the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic - the largest ship then afloat - was steaming at almost full speed across the Atlantic when it collided with an iceberg. The damage caused by the collision was so extensive that in less than three hours the ship had broken in half and sunk. This ‘the Ship of Dreams’ became a nightmare, and over 1500 passengers and crew drowned in the dark freezing water, with only just over 700 being saved. 

The ship was equipped with the latest radios, operated by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company. These radios had a daytime range of 250 miles, but at night up to 2000 miles. The Marconi wireless operators on board - Jack Phillips and Harold Bride - began sending out desperate Morse code SOS radio messages to passing ships pleading with them to come and help.  

Meanwhile, 3000 miles away in the loft of his family’s water-powered corn mill in Pontllanfraith near Blackwood in south Wales, UK, 25-year-old Arthur Moore – Artie to his family and friends - was using his homemade, crude radio equipment, operated by a generator attached to the mill’s water wheel. Artie was already well known by the public because six months earlier he had picked up the Italian government’s Declaration Of War on Libya on his radio, and this had made the front page of the national newspaper The Daily Sketch. Artie was listening to his radio early on the fateful morning of the 15^th of April when around 5 a.m. he picked up faint Morse code radio signals from the Titanic: ‘Require immediate assistance. Come at once we have struck an iceberg. Sinking, we are putting the women off in the boats’. He continued decoding and writing down the signals he was receiving, hardly believing the words he was writing. 

Thank you for the music

Music and songs create passion in our hearts and evoke vivid memories. Some of these memories are good some are sad! 

Songs are very emotive and help us store memories. A very effective method of learning is linked to the rhythm in repeating words that somehow glue the words or the facts to our minds. Most of us didn’t necessarily enjoy it but we often learned facts or figures (times tables for example) by musical rhythm. If you were dragged off to Sunday School (maybe you loved going) you may remember learning bible verses, for example, “For God so loved the world that..” or “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and ..” or maybe “Honour your Father and your Mother”. All of this was to get some important facts from the bible into your young mind for the purpose of living life and one-day meeting God.