Remembrance – Sunday, May 30, 1954
Remembrance is a mark of a thoughtful, grateful man—but sometimes it is acute and cutting, as suggested in this sentence from Shakespeare: “How sharp the point of this remembrance is!”1 Remembrance has a sharp point for many of us specially the remembrance of those who have given their lives that we might better live; especially the remembrance of those we have loved and lost. “How sharp the point of this remembrance is!”
Remembrance is especially sharp in hours of loneliness—because of faces that are absent, because of chairs that are empty, because of places that can never quite be filled. But we could well remember that remembrance need not be a futile thing, as the cherished memories of the past soften the sharpness of the present, with the promise of the future—the promise and assurance that we may see again the faces of those we love and know them once again as surely as once we knew them, our days on earth pass quickly.
A hundred years from now—or fifty—and much less than that for most of us—we shall all have gone where all men go, and the sharp point of remembrance is not so much a matter of wishing to bring them back as to have some assurance that where they are, there we may be also, It is no use saying that we may be indifferent to death—to death, academically, perhaps—to death at a distance—but we can not be indifferent to death that comes close to us, to us ourselves, or to those we love.
Death at a distance is one thing, but death at our very door is quite another, and death that takes from us someone we love is something else besides.
And it is this that so much sharpens our remembrance and lets us know that heaven is much less than heaven could be, without those we love.
No, there can be no indifference to death—not when death takes those who mean most. But when the point of such remembrance becomes too sharp, we can dull the acuteness of it by the assurance that He who gave us life and gave us our loved ones here, can give us life with our loved ones hereafter—and will, with our willingness.
1Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene 1.
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May 30, 1954
Broadcast Number 1,293