Poem For Remembrance Sunday

By gracious powers so wonderfully sheltered,
and confidently waiting come what may,
we know that God is with us night and morning
and never fails to greet us each new day.

Yet is this heart by its old foe tormented,
still evil days bring burdens hard to bear.
O give our frightened souls the sure salvation
for which, O Lord, you taught us to prepare.

And when this cup you give is filled to brimming
with bitter suffering, hard to understand,
we take it thankfully and without trembling,
out of so good, and so beloved, a hand.

Yet when again, in this same world, you give us
the joy we had, the brightness of your sun,
we shall remember all the days we lived through,
and our whole life shall then be yours alone.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906 – 1945

Trans:  F. Pratt Green. 

For Remembrance Sunday I have chosen verses by the German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written shortly before he was executed on April 5^th 1945 in a Nazi prison.  He enclosed these verses in a New Year letter to his parents.  It is an astonishingly serene statement of trust in God’s goodness, written in the knowledge of past joys and pain; and in the certainty of God’s presence “come what may” in a dark and blank future.  Can we pray for ourselves and our world, trusting that whatever the cup we are given we will take thankfully, because it comes “out of so good and so beloved hand.”

These verses can be sung to the tune Intercessor  by Parry (better known for his tune for ”Jerusalem.”)

– Tina Lamb