麻豆约拍

Good morning.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in history. On this day over 19,000 British soldiers died and nearly 40,000 were wounded, with over 1 million British, French and German soldiers left dead or injured by November 1916 when it ended.

The power of these statistics to shock has not faded, and poets, artists, writers and filmmakers have sought to make sense of the brutality and horror. Images of rows of white graves, swathes of ceramic poppies or the poignancy of individual stories convince us that we must never again allow 鈥渕illions of the mouthless dead鈥� to flit across the dreams of young men.

Yet humanity is slow to learn from its past. And so we must continue to remember. For although, as聽 the poet Charles Sorley affirms, the dead will neither hear nor see our words or tears, remembrance matters for those who are left behind. It teaches us the folly and cruelty of humanity and spurs us to be better people.

In Alan Bennett鈥檚 play, The History Boys there is a discussion about the Thomas Hardy poem, Drummer Hodge. Hodge is an insignificant, unheroic soldier who dies in the Boer War and Hector, the eccentric History teacher, comments that he is given significance by virtue of his name. No longer an anonymous casualty of a far-off war, Hodge is a human being with dignity.

The violence and suffering we observe around us can leave us feeling insignificant and impotent but the Bible reminds us that the creator of the universe knows each one of us by name and gives us hope in the midst of horror and tragedy.

Father

As we remember conflicts past, give us strength and hope to live with purpose and peace. 聽Amen.