It was the annual Remembrance service at St Marks church today.

This is always a mixed service with some of the ‘regular’ staying away as they do not like to rigid style of the event. This is counter-balanced, however, by the loads of visitors, many in uniform, who do come to this annual event.

I’m always struck by this at of remembrance and today I find myself asking ‘why’.

Why … does God allow such atrocities to happen. Where is God in the ripped apart families, in the pain and horror, in the tears and heartache, in the blood and gore. I know he is there suffering alongside, but how is he obvious, how do people connect with him?

Why do people come back each year to remember the dead? In some ways this seems macabre and self -torture in remembering lost loved ones and friends. Why submit oneself to an incredibly painful experience on an annual basis? What is it that people want when they come to such an event? Are people coming to say thank you, are they coming to say sorry, are they coming due to guilt with a ‘it should have been me’ feeling? I guess it could be a mixture of all of these? I also wonder if people are coming to search; after all of these years to still ask why and what next?

Why does the church change its whole normal program for host such an event? The church is there for the community. This is a time when the community choose to remember, when they choose to stop their normal Sunday morning events, whatever they may be, to mark this special occasion. As part of this community, we choose to do the same. The church is the people, an for the people. When the people need somewhere to remember, the church should be the natural place for that to happen.

Why should wee choose to remember? We choose to remember so that we do not forget, summed up in the words of the service said all over the UK today:

(said by an older person)
They shall grow not old,
as we that are left grow old;
age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn.

(said by a younger person)
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning,
we will remember them.

(said by all)
We will remember them.