A Latter-day Saint and well-known novelist with over 25 million books in print, reflects on the season.
This is actually written on Remembrance Sunday. Today we lay wreaths at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, and all the nation stops to observe two minutes’ silence at 11 o’clock. Why now? Why 11 o’clock? Because at 11 o’clock on the morning of 11th November, 1918, the Great War officially ended and the guns fell silent.
Of course there were skirmishes after that, more injuries, more deaths, but the end had begun. Tens of millions were dead across Europe, men and women from all over the world. And of course the Second World was to follow in September, 1939. And more wars since then – and untold wars before, back to the dawn of history.
What are we remembering? Those who died, sacrificed their youth, their health, often their arms, legs, sight, even sanity, for the sake of the countries and the people they loved, the good things they believed in.
It is not to glorify war, it is to recognize formally the gratitude we should feel for the freedoms we have, and the price paid for them, both by those who died, and those who mourn, and to give something to those who survived, and need a little help.
For me it is also very much to take stock of my own life and wonder what I am doing with all these years I have, paid for by others. Am I grateful? Am I using this time well? Am I doing all I can, or sometimes the minimum I can get by with?
We are told that ingratitude is an offence the Lord cannot overlook. I don’t know about disloyalty to those who have given us what we can, at times, take a little too much for granted. I think that might count pretty badly as well. I know that it is not who I want to be.
Many things were said in Church which had great meaning. One in particular struck me with intense power. One speaker said he was told by his father, who had fought on the front line all through World War ll – ‘No matter what a man’s faith, or lack of it, in fox holes there are no atheists. They all pray to God, just like the rest of us’
Not a new saying, of course. But it made me think not just of holes dug in the earth to give us a little protection from the bombardment of guns and flying shrapnel, but places where we shelter from any kind of fire, intellectual, emotional or spiritual.
Could it be that it is the ‘fox holes’ in life when we realize we cannot do it all alone, that force us to seek for a God to believe in, to make sense of the overwhelming, to support us in grief, comfort us in loss, help us to bear pain, guide us through confusion?
Sometimes when bad things happen, and then we are rescued by what seems divine help, we are profoundly grateful. A doubter will say ‘but how much better your God would be if he had prevented the ill in the first place!’
A person of faith begins to understand that without the pain or the ill in the first place, we would not have need of rescue. We would have continued blithely along, unaware that help was possible. Next time, when the ill might be worse, we would have no understanding where to turn, no knowledge of the love of God. Having been helped once, we look more easily upward. We have begun to nurture both faith and gratitude. We walk the same path as before, but more swiftly and with a lighter tread. We are aware that we need not be alone.
So did not the ill turn out to be in fact a blessing?
I need the ‘foxholes’. I am stronger for the lesson learned – and weak as I am, too often I need more than one lesson, or more than two. It is so easy to regard one experience as coincidence, or even to forget it altogether.
The faith to turn to God, to struggle against darkness, loss of trust, failure, any kind of pain, must become a habit, a thing we do as part of our nature, not just in moments of extremity.
It is not right to expect God to do for us what we can and should do for ourselves. We should not ask questions to which a little effort and exercise of intelligence on our part would provide an answer. We are here to learn wisdom, to begin to grow up. That is all part of the ‘route marching’ of being a soldier, the ‘daily drill’, as it were.
Are we going to be wounded in the battle? Certainly, one way or another. Is it going to hurt? Without question. Will we fall before the end? Perhaps. In fact I’m not sure that there is an end. I don’t think that I want there to be. After this life, surely the highest degree of glory will be to go on creating, learning, trying to teach, to help, to discover, above all to love?
But then the wounds will be easily healed. Nothing will threaten life. Please God, there will be labour. Not to create, to strive, to be busy, to have eternal purpose would be the same as being dead! Life everlasting is the same as growth everlasting, progress for ever.
Will we win the war?
The war will be won, but that is not the question. For some it is already won. The question is, are we going to be among those who go on into eternity for ever forward?
Yes, because we learned that there must needs be opposition in all things, and opposition strengthens us. The ‘foxholes’ are not there to trip us up, or to hide in and bury ourselves, they are wayside chapels in which to realize Who walked this path before us, Who can and will help us to move forward, scarred perhaps, wounded perhaps, but still upright. We are allowed to rest a little, take sustenance, then get up and set out again. Giving up is the only injury that cannot be healed.
So bless the ‘foxholes’, and the gunfire, help the hungry and the wounded, give thanks to those who went before us and laid down their lives to give us our possibilities. Strive to leave something bright and beautiful for those who come after us – a light on the path – food for the soul.
And let ‘thank you’ constantly be in our hearts.
