Known unto God

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.

An Inspector Calls

Recently returning from a couple of Study days in Wiltshire I sat reading on the Waterloo-bound train.  It had begun its journey out west in Exeter.  We were travelling in Wessex, so it was appropriate that I was reading Thomas Hardy, a respite from theology and the like.  I was perhaps too engrossed when a man breezed past.  He was the ticket inspector.

I missed what he said, but it was something like, "Any tickets from Salisbury?".  Yes, me (following in the wake of some infamous Russians earlier in the year). I fumbled around and eventually found my ticket when he was half way down the carriage away from me.  I left my ticket in my pocket.

Andover . . .  Basingstoke . . .  After Basingstoke he returned and I was more attentive.  "Anyone from Basingstoke?  Tickets please"  he said.  I wasn't from Basingstoke but dutifully put my hand toward my pocket again.  He was off, gone to an older lady in mid carriage who gained his attention after getting on the train relatively recently.

This is what I wondered.  Why is he inspecting tickets by request?  If I had no ticket would I be likely to speak up - "Excuse me sir, I boarded at Andover without a ticket.  Would you kindly fine me now?"

I figured this is a little like the way people approach the Judgment Day (if, they muse, it ever comes).  God the Inspector walks among the millions - "Anyone here who shouldn't be?  Any sinners to go to the Other Place?  Anyone want to confess anything?".  The silent hordes let the Day pass and quietly slip through the gaping net into the Everlasting Rest of the Blessed.

As if.  The South West Trains ticket inspector may have imperfect knowledge, limited time and lazy technique but this isn't going to be the experience of meeting the omniscient, eternal God in whom we live and move and have our being.