Daily Devotions

I recently read an article that said, “Our Armistice ceremonies and traditions are a way of holding and handing on raw memories of pride and shame, bravery and cowardice, outrage and fear, comradeship and sacrifice. We find our own meanings in them, we think our own thoughts and pray our own prayers during the two-minute silence. The risk is that the rhetoric of remembrance becomes too broad, too elegiac, too generalised for us to make sense of it.”

So here we are on the Friday before Remembrance Sunday I wonder, is there something that Jesus said that can help us to look at this kind of remembrance from a discipleship point of view?

In Matthew 10:29-31 we find Jesus proclaiming, “Look, if you sold a few sparrows, how much money would you get? A copper coin apiece, perhaps? And yet your Father in heaven knows when those small sparrows fall to the ground  You, beloved, are worth so much more than a whole flock of sparrows. God knows everything about you, even the number of hairs on your head. So do not fear.”

“Do not be afraid”. This is an invitation we encounter so often in the Bible. God is reminding us all the time that we can face our difficult choices without fear, trusting in his aid and protection. We meet these words so often because we do need to hear them repeatedly in our lives. Let me ask for the grace to trust God, as I hear him telling me not to be afraid.

The original Greek word translated as fall in our verse can also mean to perish, to come to an end, disappear, cease. Yet in Christ’s remembering the fallen we are given the image of sacrificial love, “the greatest love is shown when a person lays down his life for his friends; and you are my friends if you obey me.”John 1512-13 and we need to take on board Jesus parting words, "Remember, I am with you always.” Matthew 28:20

As we move into this Remembrance weekend we need to remember, as the author John Swinton buts it, “we are  because we are sustained in the memory of God.”

Lord, give us the certainly that beyond death there is a life where broken things are mended and lost things are found; where there is rest for the weary and joy for the sad; and where we will meet again our loved ones. We ask this through Christ our Lord, Amen.