Tuesday 11th November is Remembrance Day. Every year on Remembrance Day, we pause. We bow our heads. We fall silent. We lay wreaths. These moments matter, but remembrance is more than ritual. War is too devastating, too personal, to be reduced to routine.
Behind every monument lies a story. Behind every engraved name is a face, a family and a future cut short. A young soldier in the First World War wrote home: ‘Do not be anxious for me. I am in God’s hands. If I should fall, remember that I fell doing my duty and that I am not afraid.’ A week later, he died. His words echo courage, but they also echo heartbreak.
The curse of war
War is always a curse. It leaves behind widows and orphans, broken bodies and scarred minds. Even today, language tries to make it sound neat and clinical – ‘precision strikes’, ‘surgical operations’ – but no words can disguise the devastation left behind.
General William Sherman once put it bluntly: ‘War is hell.’ And he was right.
‘Behind every monument lies a story.’
The cause of war
But why do wars keep happening? Humanity is intelligent – we build cities, cure diseases, and yet we never seem to learn. Winston Churchill once said: ‘The story of the human race is war.’
The Christian view is that conflict starts not only between nations but within us. The Bible asks: ‘What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?’ (James 4:1 NIV).
Tolstoy captured it well: ‘Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.’ The deepest battlefield is not out there, but in here, in the human heart.
‘The deepest battlefield is not out there, but in here.’
The cure for war
And yet Remembrance Day does not leave us in despair. It invites us to hope.
- God shares our pain. Jesus was executed by soldiers. At the cross, God stepped into our battlefield and suffered with us.
- Peace is promised. The Bible looks ahead to a day when swords will be beaten into ploughs, when nations will train for peace instead of war. At Christmas, we remember the child born as the ‘Prince of Peace’.
- We can choose peace now. To remember well is to commit ourselves to be peacemakers in our homes, our communities, our world.
A glimpse of that peace came on Christmas Eve 1914. Soldiers from both sides of the Western Front laid down their weapons. They sang carols, exchanged small gifts, even played football in no man’s land. Fragile, brief, but unforgettable. It was proof that light can break through the darkest night.
‘Even in the darkest places, light can break through.’
Looking back, living forward
So how should we mark Remembrance Day? By honouring the past, yes. But also by shaping the future.
We look back with gratitude.
We look around with honesty.
We look forward with hope.
Because remembrance is not only about what was lost, it is also about what can be found: peace, reconciliation and the hope of a better world.
Remembrance is not only about what was lost, it’s about what can be found.
A Prayer of Remembrance and Hope
Lord of Peace, on this day we remember with gratitude those who gave their lives, with compassion those who still carry the scars, and with longing for a world where war is no more.
Teach us to walk the way of peace in our homes, our communities and our nations.
Turn our remembrance into resolve, our silence into service and our sorrow into hope.
Prince of Peace, heal our hearts, renew our world, and lead us to the day when your peace will reign forever. Amen.
Grace and peace,
J.John
