True story.
Last December – that’s right less than four months ago – I did an Emergency First Aid at Work course. This was a one day course that covered some aspects of First Aid at a basic level. Among other elements we learnt in the session was CPR and how to put someone in the recovery position.
You’ll be delighted to know I passed the course! I am now an Emergency First Aider!!
Good news, right?
That course is a one day course, but as well as that there is an advanced First Aid qualification that requires you to complete three days of training. Guess who’s doing that at the moment?
The main essence of the course requires us to make a practice of CPR and putting people in the recovery position. That shouldn’t be a problem to me, because I am an Emergency First Aider, right? Wrong! There I was working out what was the ratio of compressions to giving oxygen. There I was having to go over the entire thing again like a newbie.
Why was that? Simple. In the less than four months since becoming an Emergency First Aider I had not needed to put into action any CPR or putting people in the recovery position. Not only did I not need to do it, I didn’t keep my mind on it. Not only did I not keep my mind on it, there were other thing that came to the fore that pushed those things way back where my mind struggled to bring it back again.
The trainer doing this course was the same trainer who had done the first course, but he wasn’t particularly bothered by the fact that I had forgotten most of what he said. He wasn’t bothered because he knew that unless you made a practise of the skills you learnt there would be very rapid skills fade.
The lesson to learn was that to be effective in what I was called to do required maintaining constant practise of it – keeping it to the forefront so that whenever the occasion called for it, I could spring into action with little hesitation or reluctance. No point in having a title to be someone but be unable to practise the essential skills required for it.
Like a good teacher it should be at this point that I join the dots between this experience and life as a follower of Jesus. There is someone who explained it better than I could, I’ll leave it to him.
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is near-sighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. (2 Peter 1:5-9)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
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