November 1, 2018

​A Time of Remembrance
November always strikes me as a pensive month as we remember both those we have loved at All Souls Memorial Services and those who gave and continue to give their lives for our freedoms at Remembrance Services.
 
This is of course a particularly special year marking 100 years of Remembrance and the ending of WW1. A number of our churches have a Tommies Silhouette in them, the image of the ‘unforgotten soldier’ is always a poignant one. My great grandfather a private in the Sussex Regiment died on the battlefields in November 2016 aged 27 just one of millions of casualties, husbands, sons, fathers…. It must all have looked so bleak and helpless.
 
On 4 August 1918 King George V called a National Day of Prayer. One hundred days later the war ended. On 23 May 1940 with allied armies trapped on beaches King George V1 called for a National Day of Prayer and apparently congregations overflowed, the same day 800 vessels answered the call to evacuate Dunkirk.
  
When things look and feel helpless we need more than ourselves, we need the Divine and we need each other. Let us never be afraid to ask of either.
 
They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
​At the going down of the sun and in the morning, 
We will remember them…     
 
Peace be with you,
Nikki

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