Having just written in the last Fresh News about the importance of memory, can I now encourage you to remember something?

Only a fortnight ago the news was full of the terrible events unfolding in Japan – the huge earthquake, devastating tsunami and problems with the nuclear reactors in Fukushima Daichi.

Now the Japanese situation scarcely merits a mention as our headlines are full of the conflict in Libya.

This is very much the way with news. Sadly, yesterday’s disaster quickly becomes tomorrow’s chip wrapper. It hardly seems a year ago that we were all focused on the problems in Haiti and now that too seems out of mind. How many other crises are now forgotten?

I urge you to spare a thought and a prayer for all these situations as they come to mind, but I have a more personal reason for asking you not to forget Japan.

My son Ben lives and works as a teacher in Tokyo and he crouched with screaming colleagues under tables in his school when the quake struck.

Thank God my son is alive in a land where many have lost homes and families. There is nothing like personal involvement to bring home the gravity and intensity of tragedy. My wife and I are grateful for the prayers and support of so many friends.

So can I simply ask, please don’t forget Japan?

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Psalm 46: 1-3.