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Good morning

Almost every day we are faced with dilemmas: choices between doing the expedient thing and the right thing.

For most of us, moral choices are domestic: reminding the person behind the till that they’ve forgotten to ring in that item; keeping the expenses claim straight; noticing dishonesty and calling it out.

When it comes to conscience, few are called to make life or death choices even once in our lives.

Yesterday, the anniversary of VE day commemorated those who did; and rightly celebrated the valour and stamina of allied forces and civilians - most poignantly those who sacrificed their lives for liberty.

Their victory, in a sense, was also the triumph of those Germans who were driven by conscience to resist the Nazi state from within – many of whom didn’t live to see the liberation which they craved.

The gestures of people like the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hanged in 1945 or the 21 year old kindergarten teacher Sophie Scholl, beheaded in 1943, to name but two German resistors seemed futile at the time. Their choices ended in execution for them and many of their companions.

Now their actions of defiance seem like beacons of nobility in the darkness of Nazi tyranny. And their bravery to show that redemption was not impossible even for a nation so complicit in evil.

What good did their sacrifices do? They asserted that for a strong society to exist, people of powerful conscience are needed; because only they will ensure that honesty and right dealing – not expediency – are the foundation for freedom.

Creator and Sustainer of all there is: you made us to live together; you speak to us in the depths of our consciences; may they guide our individual choices; and may these create a just and strong society.

AMEN