Words of Light and Hope from Fran Neale AWA

Words of Light and Hope  By Fran Neale AWA

We’re in the season of  Hallowe’en, All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day and our In Memory services, which leads to thoughts about death. With Halloween it’s rather caricatured with jangling skeletons and white-sheeted ghouls! But, as has often been said, death is one of the certainties of life. Here are what I hope may be some positive thoughts on the subject.

To start on a light note, this notice was seen in a country church bulletin. “Due to the high cost of maintaining the church, it would be appreciated if parishioners would cut the grass around their own graves.”  

Kahil Gibran says ” For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one    In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;     And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring…….. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then you shall truly dance.”

 This short poem was found in Cologne during the Second World War, where Jews were hiding from the Nazis,     

 “I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.

I believe in love even when I feel it not.  

 I believe in God even when he seems to be silent.”

Jesus said, “In very truth I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains that and nothing more; but if it dies it bears a rich harvest.” John 12 v 24. One can take that literally and metaphorically.

Helen Keller (who was born blind and deaf) wrote :- “I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower – the light in my  darkness, the Voice in my Silence.”  

And finally, from a hymn, “Hallelujah my Father, in his death is my birth.    Hallelujah my Father, in his life is my life.”