Earlier this year I stood thoughtfully and thankfully by this grave in Belgium - of a First World War soldier from the county in which, historically speaking, I now live.
Today we reflected on the large number of World War 1 soldiers whose memorial is either a name on a vast monument (because their body was never found in an identifiable form) or who, in the form of human remains, were buried without their name being discovered.
Walking around the battlefield cemeteries this sight is not a rare thing. At Tyne Cot, the largest (but certainly not the only) British Empire cemetery for the Ypres Salient there are far in excess of 10,000 graves and over 35,000 names on the monument.
Yet on every anonymous grave - 'An Unknown Soldier of the Great War' - there is added at the bottom - KNOWN UNTO GOD. No life, whether snatched in the womb, pulverised on the battlefield or expended in recklessly vain attempts to migrate to a better world is unknown to God.
Remembrance Day demands that we seek to afford human lives the dignity that they are owed as creatures of a Creator rather than as accidents of nature.
No comments:
Post a Comment