Caistor St Edmund

Even when you have been somewhere for a long time, and times of year like November, and Remembrance, come round again and again, there is always something new. This year we have a brand new Guide group in Stoke Holy Cross, and I’ll be visiting them at the beginning of the month to talk with them about Remembrance before some of them come and join us at Caistor St Edmund for our service on 9^th November. For me it raises the question of how we can continue to remember, and to talk about remembering, as the generations go past, and those who go back as far as the Second World War are fewer and fewer.

If we are given half a chance, free from the distractions and safety net of every possible piece of information in a phone at our fingertips, people are pretty good at remembering. Cultures have found all sorts of ways of doing it, and there are lots of different examples in the bible.

One of my favourite ones is tucked away in the Old Testament. The Israelites are trying to establish themselves under the leadership of Samuel, and after one of their various victories, he plants a stone in the ground. He calls it the “Stone of help” (the source of the name Ebenezer) because God had helped them get to that point.

Today we still use stones to remember, of course, from individual graves, to war memorials, to the pebbles the Brownies will be painting poppies on. But while our stones tend to remember particular people, Samuel’s looks to God himself. He recognises that most of all it is God who has helped them, and so can we; one of the hymns we most often use on Remembrance Sunday describes God as our help in ages past.

Not just the past, though, which brings us back to where we started: the hymn goes on to talk about him being our hope for years to come, as well. If we say we follow Jesus, we are putting ourselves in a place between his first coming, in ages past, and his return, which is our future hope. He may have done extraordinary things up until now, worthy of many memorial stones, or their modern equivalent, but he will go on doing them until our brand new Guides and Brownies are the grownups encouraging a new generation to remember. And one day, when he does return, he will be what the hymn finally promises us: an eternal home.

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