From Caroline - [email protected], 01285 712467
Reading for Sunday: John 15.12-17
Our November season of remembrance comes to one of its key points this weekend, as we gather for the solemn occasion of Remembrance Sunday. This has always been an important part of the life of the church since it was instituted in 1919, the year after WWI, or the Great War, as it was then known, ended on Armistice Day, the 11th November. But it feels as if this occasion has grown in national recognition over the last few years, with more people noticing and marking this call to remember.
I’m sure a great deal of ink has been spilled as to why this should be. Locally, it feels as if this day is a touchstone – a moment carved out in time, in the busyness of peoples’ daily lives – to connect with the reality and importance of death and sacrifice. This is a good thing. Modern life is a mass of contradictions, as we wrestle with our identity in a world of technology and mass information. It’s possible for us to simultaneously be bombarded with news that makes us feel completely under siege, and at the same time be cocooned in our own bubble, untouched by things we don’t want to see or hear.
Remembrance Sunday cuts through that. Like a magnet dropped onto a plate of iron filings, we see how it catches and alters the paths of peoples’ everyday lives. It places the concept of death and remembrance in front of us in a way we simply cannot ignore or bypass.
This year is also a significant year – 80 years since the end of the Second World War, and all the horrors that brought into the world and the lives of people, military and civilian, who lived through that time. There have been many conflicts since, and violence continues to touch the lives of so many people around the world, and so we remember them too. We give thanks for the sacrifice of the fallen, and offer our own prayer and commitment that we, and the whole human race, may turn aside from violence and seek the greater good.
We remember, so that we might not forget. So that we might not repeat. So that our eyes might be opened to the world around us, to the fragility of human life, and the preciousness of it.
Let’s take that time, hold it close, and let that remembrance take root.
Rev’d Caroline
This coming week we will only be having Zoom Morning Prayer on Saturday, due to scheduling issues. Please join us on Saturday 8th November at 9am using the link and information below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82168687276?pwd=bLnz9hVRNO4EPnfoDlgy0lDWz50W1C.1
Meeting ID: 821 6868 7276 Passcode: 829504