Remembrance Sunday
READING: Job 19:23–27a  

Remembering with Hope

Remembrance Sunday in the UK is a special day for many – people pausing  to remember all those who have suffered or died in wars and conflicts, both in the past and in our own time. It began after the First World War, when people  gathered in silence to honour the millions who had lost their lives and to promise to work for peace. Each year since that time , on the Sunday closest to 11 November, people of every generation and background gather at war memorials, in churches, and in homes to reflect, to give thanks, and to pray for a more peaceful world.

So as we meet on this  Remembrance Sunday we are challenged  to hold together both memory and hope. For many it is a time to look back with gratitude –  remembering courage, sacrifice, and love –  and to look forward with faith in the possibility of reconciliation and lasting peace. And this year when there is  so much global conflict,  instability and fragility finding the courage to pray for peace and reconciliation seems even more urgent

The words of Job from the Bible reading today rise from a place not of calm certainty but of anguish. Job has lost everything: family, home, health, even his sense of God’s nearness. Yet from the ashes of loss comes one of Scripture’s most defiant declarations of hope: “I know that my Redeemer lives.”

Job’s cry is not pious optimism. It is the raw, honest conviction that suffering and death cannot erase what is true and good in humanity . He refuses to believe that injustice or destruction will have the final word. Somewhere, somehow, there must be a witness-  a living Redeemer – who will remember rightly, who will hold his story with compassion and truth.

So on this day of remembrance, we pray that we might hear Job’s voice echoed in the silences of our nation at 11am –  in the two-minute silence at the Cenotaph or war memorial , in the names engraved on memorial stones, in the faces of those who still carry loss, and in the places  wherever people are gathering. Like Job, we long for assurance that sacrifice is not forgotten, that the lives given in war, in service, in quiet endurance, are not lost to time. We trust that God, the living Redeemer, remembers with justice and tenderness even when human memory fades.

To remember with hope is not to glorify war or to tidy away its horrors. It is to honour love’s costly witness in the midst of chaos – the courage of those who “laid down their lives for their friends,” and the resilience of those who kept faith amid ruin. Job’s hope is not naïve; it is born of protest and perseverance. He stands for every person who dares to hope that light will outlast the darkness and that green shoots of life will break through places that have been destroyed and decimated. .

After the bombing of Coventry Cathedral in 1940, two charred beams were found fallen in the shape of a cross. Across the broken stones someone inscribed the words “Father forgive.” From that place of devastation grew a worldwide community of reconciliation. Each time a Cross of Nails is placed in another church or conflict-torn land, it proclaims again that even from ruin, redemption can live. Love will prevail.

And perhaps, this year, as we wear our poppy, we might also light a candle at home –  a candle for peace, for who have been  displaced by today’s wars, for those whose stories are still being written in suffering and courage. Placed beside the poppy, the candle becomes a sign of both remembrance and hope: a small flame declaring that the light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Today  we remember, not to dwell in the past but to affirm what endures: love stronger than death, justice deeper than violence, and the quiet conviction that nothing –  not even war, not even loss – will finally be lost in the heart of God.

Our remembering becomes an act of faith. As Job cried out from desolation, we too affirm: “I know that my Redeemer lives.” In that living hope, we entrust all who have died, all who mourn, and all who still seek peace, to the God who holds every name, every story, every sorrow – forever engraved on the rock of His love.

Photo Credit: Chris Sansbury (Unsplash.com)