Here are two meditations brought together by the Baptist Peace Fellowship. We're thankful to the authors for sharing their work. The first meditation for Remembrance Sunday was written at a war cemetery set in the edge of a cornfield near Arras (northern France). Looking at the row upon row of military gravestones and crosses in this area brought a vivid reminder of the cost of conflict whether in resisting aggression or peacemaking. (The image is of private Fred Heeley, a teenager who died to the south of Arras just fourteen days before the end of the First World War. He has no known grave.)
At a war grave
Christ,
what is this sea of stone
sown with the wheat,
that cries for peace?
What loves,
bright promises and dreams
cut stubble-short here
lie buried deep?
Christ
who makes the tomb
a place of living hope,
unite their offering
to your sacrifice;
By your power
let not this grain
remain
fruitless and alone,
but from it
may we share a harvest
rich in faith and love
in which life begins anew,
Lord, let this be so.
Kenneth Carveley
Remember
Remember Ypres, the Somme, Mons, and Verdun.
Remember the Western Desert, El Alamein, the Normandy beaches.
Remember Dresden, Hiroshima and the Burma Road.
Remember Korea, the Falkland Islands, Northern Island, Iraq.
Remember the courage, the comradeship, the ingenuity,
the spirit of working together for a common cause,
the planning together for a better world
that would come with peace.
Remember the call to arms, the patriotic songs, the posters,
the partings which were such sweet sorrow,
the sound of the drum, the skirl of the pipe,
the prayer that God would be on our side.
Remember the carnage, the colossal, stinking, bloody horror;
the ripped bodies on the wire,
the platoons of which only three out of forty lived.
Remember the widows of sixty years and more,
the old men and women living now who never knew their fathers.
Remember the love that was lost, the wisdom wasted,
the minds that were twisted and the limbs distorted.
Remember the wealth of nations being fired from guns, dropped as
bombs: smashing schools, homes, factories, churches and
hospitals;
ruining crops, destroying trees,
Remember the hope of a whole generation
left to evaporate in the sands of a desert
or sink forever in the oceans of the world.
Remember this day the children who will die
while the world spends its wealth on arms;
the young who have no work
while others in their generation are trained to fight;
The ambulances that will not come
while we argue about how many troop carriers we need;
the research into disease left neglected
while brilliant minds are used to study more effective destruction.
Remember the one who asked us to remember him.
Graham CooK
