This is a weekend of REMEMBERING... of recalling and mourning the ultimate sacrifice of all the military women and men of our country who have died while serving our country. SO many lives cut short! — people who were somebody’s husband or wife, daughter or son, brother or sister — parent — grandchild — each one cherished by family AND by their Creator...
GOD WEEPS FOR EVERY ONE OF THEM.
On May 9, Russia’s Memorial Day took place. God wept for those cherished children.
On May 4, The Netherlands commemorated their war dead. God wept.
On May 11 — God wept with Israel...
On April 13 — also with Palestinians...
On April 25 — for cherished ones in Australia and New Zealand...Two Sundays before the first Sunday of Advent — God mourned all who died in German conflicts... and on and on and on and on...
GOD WEEPS FOR EACH AND EVERY PERSON — NO MATTER THE COUNTRY...
In 1934, when Lloyd Stone was 22 years old he wrote a poem called SONG OF PEACE:
This is my song, O God of all the nations, A song of peace for lands afar, and mine; this is my home, the country where my heart is; here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine; but other hearts in other lands are beating with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean, and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine; but other lands have sunlight too, and clover, and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations, a song of peace for their land and for mine.
Later, Georgia Harkness, Cornell graduate, a Methodist, an ecumenical leader, remarkable advocate for equality in all forms and the first female theologian to teach in a seminary, added a third verse:
May truth and freedom come to every nation; may peace abound where strife has raged so long; that each may seek to love and build together a world united, righting every wrong; a world united in its love for freedom, proclaiming peace together in one song.
Paired with the tune FINLANDIA, this hymn (#722 in our Chalice Hymnal) has become a favorite. Click here, listen and sing along! And as you do, say a prayer for people everywhere, that we may all strive to live in peace — every single one of us in the world as God’s Beloved Child.
Amen.
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