Tuesday 2 November 2021
All Souls
Wisdom 3:1-9, 23-27 (alt). The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want – Psalm 22(23). Romans 5:5-11. Mark 15:33-39; 16:1-6.
The Lord is my shepherd
Over centuries, Psalm 23 has become synonymous with times of great hope and times of great desperation. When soldiers spontaneously stopped fighting on Christmas Day 1914, bringing the butchery of the world’s largest battlefield to a premature end, some sang Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd. Soldiers greeted their enemies, played soccer games, exchanged gifts, sang and held church services in French, German and English. The following day, soldiers on both sides stubbornly refused to kill those new friends they’d made. This worried the top brass who opposed the truce; no nation would prevail if all the soldiers refused to fight. The press was censored from reporting on it, and the peaceful soldiers were punished and moved on, swapped out for fresh, young warriors who saw the enemy as just that. Years later, the war thundered on. During the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest days of conflict in human history, soldiers walking through the valley of the shadow of death read Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd. Today our conflicts are less bloody, drawn along ideological, religious and economic lines, but like the psalmist, our hopes and fears remain. Whether our days are marked by great hope or great desperation, may we see dignity of those in opposing trenches, and fear no evil. The Lord is our shepherd.
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