Amid a difficult economy and a suffering job market, the CEO of Sparkle Markets, a regional grocery chain operating in Eastern Ohio, Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, announced a decision earlier this month that pleasantly shocked customers. Unlike most supermarket mega-chains, the company will not be implementing any self-checkout machines.

President Vincent Furrie, Jr. wrote on Facebook, ‘Many big grocery brands have decided to phase out their cashiers and replace them with self-checkout machines. They believe limiting human interaction is the future of retail shopping.’ Encouraging human interaction, both with God and with each other is the theme of this year’s Keswick Convention. ‘The theme of Keswick Convention 2023 is Human,’ states its website. ‘On the first page of the Bible, God declares, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness’ (Genesis 1:26).

Sparkle Markets' decision also comes amid an increase in shoplifting cases that has been linked to the use of self-checkout machines. Just last month, in another store, a shopper used a self-checkout scam to make off with three TVs for the price of a can of soda. The CEO of retailing giant Walmart, Doug McMillon, has said that stores might be closing or increasing their prices over the coming year because of shoplifting.

The Keswick Convention is all about personal enrichment, but not by theft: it’s something given by God that is deeper and more lasting. It’s about the enrichment of the spirit of the thousands of people who will be there, whose understanding is enlarged by what they hear in morning and evening services, in the morning seminars, and in fellowship with each other. People come from a whole range of churches with a strong sense of belonging to the family of God.

This year I’ll be speaking about the power of spiritual support in dementia, both for the person living with it and the family. It’s on Friday 21^st July at 9.30 am, in Packing Hall 2. Packing Hall is a good venue for this talk as I will be packing in a lot of practical and spiritual information.

We will also be on our stand in the Exhibition Hall, with information on everything we have to offer. Come and bring your questions and take a moment or two to keep us company!

Pop singer Taylor Swift’s song, ‘the Lakes’ has the lines, ‘take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die. Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry.’ But not when the Keswick Convention is on - then it’s the perfect place to learn what it is to be human, to be made in God’s own image, and to be filled with joy.