Apologies to you all and Sue! I have just seen this article Sue has sent and really it should have been out for Remembrance Sunday time. I just hadn't seen it! So sorry all!
Remembrance
As the days get shorter the year seems first to turn faster – harvest, autumn colours,
Halloween. Then to slow down as the clocks fall back and the days so often get greyer as
well as shorter (no-fun, no-sun, no-vember). And as we come to Remembrance this year there seems to be an added poignancy to this season. Because the remembrance that so many of us are going through isn’t just a remembering of wars won 75 and 100 years ago, or even conflicts more recent. It’s a remembrance for a time that all of a sudden seems long gone. A time ‘BC’ (before Covid -19).
Remembering often also means acknowledging grief. Certainly, in the early years after a
national conflict, for many the season has been one of heightened grief. And I think in many
ways this year we are grieving for the life we remember that seems so recent but also so long
ago. A time when we didn’t have to think about who we could meet or hug, how close we
should stand to people. A time when we could sing in church!
It’s right to acknowledge that grief, yes. But not to get stuck in it, because one of the
defining characteristics of Christians is that we are a people of hope. Paul’s letters talk so
often about the hope we have in Christ. How that hope enables us to endure. And also how
that hope enables us to look forward with a confidence that the here and now is not the end,
and is not all there is. Like when he writes first to the Thessalonian church: “We always
thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before
our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your
endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ”.
So how can we make that hope real for ourselves and those we love and care for over the
coming weeks? One way I have found really helpful is to take a lead from Paul who starts
with thankfulness, and in my daily prayer time to make a conscious effort to be thankful for
something. I remember last winter when I was walking through dripping, miserable woods
with the rain continuing to fall, and little light in the sky, there, in the depths of the wood I
came across a small beech tree. It was a beautiful shape and its browned leaves were still
hanging on. I could have seen it as sad and a sign of the end of things. But instead I gave
thanks for it standing there constantly, despite the weather, for whoever came past to see its
inherent beauty.
Next Sunday is Remembrance Sunday. We will be unable to attend church this year as
perhaps we might have done in the past, so there will be special thoughts and prayers online
that we hope will help us to commemorate this time. And by the time we get to the end of the month we will be hitting ‘Stir Up Sunday’, which is on 22 November this year. Christmas
will be coming into view. It might be something of a different Christmas – but it will still be a
reminder of the hope that comes into the world. Jesus, who walks with us as Christians along
every step of the way and who is in the end the unchanging and ever constant basis of that
hope.
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