The wise men from the east looked forward to … what? They were not sure. But it was worth journeying through deserts and ‘cities hostile and towns unfriendly.’ There are times when hope grows dim. The people of Gaza today are hemmed in on every side. They have no food, no water, no medicine, no shelter, no future.
That is today. But there were times even more terrible. Little more than a hundred years ago, South African soldiers fought against the German army at Delville Wood in France. A German officer described the scene afterwards as a ‘wasteland of shattered trees, charred and burnt stumps, craters thick with mud and blood, and corpses, corpses everywhere. In places they were piled four deep. Worst of all was the lowing of the wounded. It sounded like cattle in a fair….’
One man who survived Delville Wood died only in 1998 at the age of 101. He was Joe Samuels and he told his story a year before he died. ‘All I can say is the whole thing was terrible; there still aren’t words for it, even now. I know what happened to some of my own pals, I saw it. I felt as if some of my life was gone too then. That’s how I felt I can’t say I’ve ever really got over it, even up to now… It’s too painful, it’s too bad to think about, even now.’
How can you speak of hope to the men of Delville Wood? Isaiah puts it this way; ‘We were all like people unclean, all that integrity of ours like filthy clothing. We have all withered like leaves and our sins blew us away like the wind. No one invoked your name our roused himself to catch hold of you … And yet, Lord you are our Father; we the clay, you the potter, we are all the work of your hand.’
There are moments of intense suffering which expose the raw withered awfulness some of our fellow brothers and sisters suffer. And we must call to mind they have done no wrong that would deserve their calamity. They are suffering for us. They experience Gaza, Delville Wood or Golgotha for us. I cannot say, ‘I am glad I was not, or am not, there.’ I am there – if I have an ounce of feeling. No one lives, or dies, for themselves alone. We live and die as members of each other – our own family, which we feel intensely, and the whole human family.
In the depths of the worst that life can throw at us, we can still ‘rouse ourselves’ to catch hold of the One who said in his worst moment, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ 3 December 2023 Advent Sunday 1B Is 63:16 …64:8 1 Cor 1:3-9 Mk13:33-37
Post published in: Faith