But that’s OK. They don’t worry me. The people that worry me are the people who don’t take any notes whatsoever. They just sit there, and they remember everything. Maybe this is saying something about me rather than about anybody else, but I really don’t like those people. And I really don’t like them even more when they remember everything that they were supposed to remember.

Of course nowadays there are those people who get out their WAP, wi-fi thingy stuff with just a screeny-whatsit and they scribble away with a stylus. It’s like going back to slates and chalks. As soon as they finish scribbling, it all comes printing out beautifully on a printer in some faraway place.

How do you remember what’s important? I write lists. I have lists for pretty much everything and when times are really bad I write a list of the lists that I have. I’m sometimes accused of using this to avoid the issue, but I like to think of this as a way of helping me keep focused and to remember the essential things I have to achieve. One of the recent gurus of time management said, “Keep the main thing the main thing.” To which I add, “Keep the main list the main list.” It’s all about knowing what you need to remember.

I once heard about a person’s prayer life, and this person was very keen to remember to pray. And not just say the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed and the formulas set down in the 39 Articles of Religion, but those prayers for people and places and situations in the world that she wanted to pray for but just needed to be reminded that it was important. So she used Post-It Notes. And she had Post-It Notes all over the house. She had Post-It Notes in the loo to remind her to pray for people who lived in unsanitary conditions. She had Post-It Notes in the kitchen cupboards so when she opened them she’d remember to pray for farmers, for transport firms, for shopkeepers. She had a Post-It Note on the pot-plant to remind her to give thanks to God for his wonderful creation and she had a Post-It Note on her cleaning materials, so that as she cleaned her house she remember to say sorry for the things she’d done wrong and seek God’s forgiveness, to be cleaned from her sin.

It’s about remembering what’s important. The writer of Deuteronomy is clear – that remembering what is important is important. Our reading doesn’t say what is important, but makes it very clear that it is important to remember what is important.

‘Write these words of mine on your heart and on your hand and on your forehead. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you’re out. When you go to bed and when you get up; write them on your doorframes and on your gates.’

Whatever these words are, it’s clear we are to surround ourselves with them. Read them on your way in and on your way out. Talk about them last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Teach them to your children. Know them, not just in your head but in your heart and your soul. Surround yourselves and your lives with these words. Hold fast to these words, and you shall have life, life in all its fullness.

Jesus as you know was a carpenter. He built things for a living. There are some scholars that suggest Jesus was more of a mason than a carpenter. I’m no scholar, I don’t know. Maybe he was a mason in that he built houses, but he was certainly a craftsman who worked with his hands, and if he didn’t build the houses he would have built the chairs and the tables and the beds that went into the houses being built by the masons. He would have known the people who put brick on brick to build the houses.

He also knew that most people take the easy option. When given the easy option and the wise option, most people choose the easy option. Most people didn’t want to make the effort to build their houses upon the rocks of Palestine. It would have meant hewing out the side of a slope and hauling up the materials. It would have meant living harsh lives in the hills, making transportation more difficult, where water was scare and where the winter winds whipped across the escarpment.

Most took the easy option to build by the riverbeds, where the scenery is pleasant, where the water is abundant and where the trees provide shelter from those winter winds. Although floods were a risk, most of the time the streams just trickled by. On rare occasions, once in a generation, that flood would come: heavy snow, a quick thaw, torrential downpours and a vicious flash flood would sweep everything away in its path. Entire communities would be washed away. Every now and again the rain fell, the floods rose, the winds blew and beat upon those houses and they fell, and great was their fall.

This image that Jesus uses of housing stock being built upon different foundations is far more than an exaggerated illustration chosen to help make a point. This was part and parcel of first century Palestine. For those who have ears to hear, it still is. The people of China and Burma would agree; so would the people of New Orleans, to say nothing of the people of Allonby Close, and all the roads in this country hit by floods last year and last week.

Jesus doesn’t hit upon this image by chance. This isn’t an illustration pulled rabbit-like out of the hat. This isn’t the climax of the Sermon on the Mount for nothing. Those who heard Jesus were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with authority, not like some of their scribes or their teachers, and his message – putting the whole of the Sermon on the Mount into one sound-bite:

Keep the main thing the main thing.

Surround yourselves with these words. Read then on the way in and on the way out. Talk about them last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Teach then to your children. Know them, not just in your head, but in your heart and your soul, for these are the words of eternal life. Hold fast to these words and you shall have life, life in all its fullness.