Keep Thinking
On and around November 11th, some of us will be attending services of
Remembrance.
We will keep a time of silence
during which we will remember all those who gave their lives and still give their lives
in an attempt to stop evil in the world.
It will also be a time to reflect on how we can give ourselves
in ways that will build a better world.
At a final supper with his friends,
on the night before he died,
Jesus told those gathered around him, that whenever they ate and drank together in the future,
they were to remember Him.
The invitation to remember, wasn’t an emotional gesture, made by one who knew his friends would be sad when he was gone from them. It was a challenge to them (and us), to live as he showed it is possible to live; bringing justice and peace to the world.
During our lives we may experience many kinds of death.
There is emotional death brought about by intolerable stress. Relationships crack, break and die.
What is more difficult to accept isn't death but despair –
the mental and emotional conclusion that life isn't worth living.
Paul wrote these words to the church in Rome,
“I am certain that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ:
neither death nor life,
neither angels nor other heavenly rulers or powers,
neither the present nor the future" (Romans 8.38).
Since then countless others have affirmed the same truth,
each in his or her own way.
The Christian church speaks about “resurrection”.
My understanding of resurrection is not so much about remembering an event that may or may not have happened a couple of thousand years ago;
but as a fact of life in the here-and-now.
We all have the free gift of resurrection from the various kinds of potential death which life brings.
Individuals, organisations, whole communities and entire nations can rise again from destruction.
And so let us remember that
above all else,
and work to make it a reality in our own lives and the lives of others.
I like these words from the writer Mark Twain,
and offer them to you to ponder.
“Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone;
and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come.
Live in the present, and make it so beautiful it will be worth remembering”
Rev. Sue O’Hare (Minister)
Philip Begley: philip@caerphillymethodistchurch.org
Samuel Anstee: samuel@caerphillymethodistchurch.org
