Skip to main content

Yad Vashem and 100,00

 


"The soul of man is a candle unto God".  These are the words which are over the door into the memorial for children who died in the Holocaust, part of Yad Vashem near Jerusalem.   As you enter the darkened space their names are heard being read out while you walk along a narrow corridor.  You turn a corner and enter a large space, cave like in its echoing shadows and your breath is taken from you.   In the centre is a column of candles around which are a number of mirrors which reflect the candlelight in all directions.  It’s like stumbling into a galaxy of flickering, living flames.  Indeed the soul of man is a candle unto God.   

The emotional impact of the Yad Vashem Children's Memorial is one way of helping us register in a visceral way the appalling reality of what lies behind the numbers and statistics which our minds can only handle in a very muted and almost abstract way.  This week not only have we marked Holocaust Memorial Day but also in the UK we have passed the grim milestone of 100,000 precious lives lost to Covid-19.  We have become so used to daily updates of numbers that I fear we become immure to what such figures truly represent.   

A flickering candle is alive, warm and in constant motion yet fragile and exposed too.  I've been at a number of deathbeds and I know how it is when the final breath leaves and the candle quietly turns dark.  The person is there but we know they have gone.  All that is special and wonderful, life giving and heart warming about each of us comes out of that inner place where the candle of our soul burns. That soul light is made physical and tangible in our friendships and loves, our deeds of kindness and care, the solid day to day ordinary sacrifices and service that we each contribute to our magically diverse human race.

At the core of our Christian faith is the belief that we are made in the image of God and that God loves each human being with an infinite love.   Personally I find these two beliefs the only light that is left sometimes in very dark times, when all evidence is to the contrary.    Yad Vashem and our recent 100,000 deaths to Covid-19 are such times.     Where does this leave us?  Victor Frankl and others who have been through the unspeakable speak with the authority of the camps. When a young boy was hung for stealing bread a heart rending cry was heard ‘where is God?'  A quiet response came from an old Rabbi ‘God is there on the gallows’.

I honestly don’t know where all this will end, but as Christians one of our distinctive offerings is that in some manner God is suffering with us, that he is in solidarity with his broken pandemic world.  We can cry in our pain and confusion with Jesus on the cross as he quoted Psalm 22… ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’. And we can also draw strength from post Easter people who testify to God’s presence in extreme circumstances again and again through the centuries and across our world today: “God has said ‘I will never leave you or forsake you’: so we say with confidence ‘The Lord is my helper’”.  (Hebrews 13:5,6)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Re-enchantment

  The magical wonder of snow can be lost by a couple of degrees warming turning the white falling flakes into dismal rain.    It is precisely the same elements of moisture and air, humidity and wind, yet the shifting of the one variant of temperature creates a totally different outcome.  I have only managed three snow days in the mountains this winter, due to a combination of mostly busy diaries and a very unpredictable weather which meant days set aside for a climb would sometimes be literally a washout.  Ina and I did have a good summitting of the Cobbler with the spikes on our boots giving us the grip we needed in the the last snow of the season, and I felt again the sheer wonder of walking in crisp, hard snow as the world fell away around us. It looks like it's gone for the year now though and we have to wait 9 months probably to get out onto the white stuff again.  The hills just look wet and sodden now and most uninspiring... and yet...they are exactl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lambing Snows and Holy Week

  (photo courtesy of Abi Bull, Isle of Skye) Lambing snow is the name given to an early spring snowfall that can catch some of the wee lambs out who are born at the start of the season.   Farmers have to watch out for this and, given care and shelter, the lambs are usually able to survive.   It coincides too with the images of daffodils emerging through a covering of late snow,   a similar sign of hope and new life in a forbidding and even hostile environment. Nevertheless there is something beautiful of this setting of fragile life against the rawness of nature, something that speaks to the heart of the human condition and the poignancy of it all.   I write this on a Good Friday which is set in a global context of much uncertainty and even fear and desperation.    The centuries old story that we are taken back to again and again by the turning of the season, of a God who died for a suffering and broken world, seems to have more resonance than ever. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Solstice Nudge

  A Solstice Nudge At 3.47am this morning the solstice took place and the earth started its' long journey back towards summer (in the northern hemisphere at least!).   I always feel my heart lighten a little when this happens. It’s all about the direction of travel as I have so often said to people struggling with circumstances or a seeming lack of progress.    And the fact that I know we are heading towards warmth and light makes all the difference in the dark and the cold.   It reminds me that my current situation, however stalled it may feel, will one day pass. Such a change though rarely takes place in a dramatic and obvious ‘before and after’ kind of way.   Rather it feels like a nudge.   You would have to be looking very closely to notice that little tilt of the earth that starts the process.   I’ve just been looking at my weather app and over the next few days the sunset time moves by a minute each day: today:15.44;   23 rd : 15.45...
Post a Comment
Read more