Day 51 - Remembering
- Congregational Federation
- 7 days ago
- 2 min read
Isaiah 2:1–4
“...Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
On a recent trip to Cambodia, I realised that there are moments when history stops being something we read about and becomes something we feel. Visiting Tuol Sleng and the Choeung Ek Killing Fields was one of those moments for me. I had known the facts — the dates, the numbers, the headlines from my teenage years — but standing on that ground was different. The weight of it settled slowly: every photograph, every name, every bone fragment rising to the surface after rain. Nearly two million lives extinguished by the Khmer Rouge regime that taught its people to fear, betray, and destroy one another.
When we returned to our ship, an instrumental version of Cheri Keaggy’s In Remembrance of Me was playing quietly in the background. The timing felt almost too poignant. We had just walked through a place where human beings were treated as disposable, and now here was a melody written to help us remember the One who gave His life so that every human being might be seen, known, and redeemed.
The contrast was overwhelming.
As I listened, a line from a very different song kept echoing in my mind:
“War — what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.”
It’s blunt, almost jarring, yet painfully accurate. War dehumanises. War devours. War leaves behind empty graves, silent fields, and generations carrying scars they never asked for.
And yet Scripture refuses to let war have the final word.
Isaiah speaks of a day when God Himself will teach the nations His ways. Weapons will be dismantled and reshaped into tools for growth. People will walk in the light of the Lord instead of the shadow of fear. It is a vision not of naïve optimism but of divine promise — a future secured by the death and resurrection of Christ.
After Easter, we live in the space between victory won and victory completed. Christ has risen, but the world still bleeds. We proclaim peace, yet nations rage. We celebrate new life, yet we stand in places like Choeung Ek and feel the ache of all that is not yet healed.
This is why Communion matters so deeply.
“This is the bread of life, broken for you… This is the cup of the new covenant.”
In remembering Jesus, we remember who we are: people called not to perpetuate violence but to embody His peace. People who believe that every life bears the image of God. People who trust that the Spirit — the same Spirit we await at Pentecost — is already at work, healing wounds, softening hearts, and whispering hope into places of unspeakable pain.
Our Cambodian guide told me, “It helps to tell the story.”
He’s right.
Remembering is part of healing.
Remembering is part of resisting evil.
Remembering is part of hope.
As we journey from Easter toward Pentecost, may we be people who remember — and in remembering, become instruments of Christ’s peace in a world that desperately needs it.
Debbie Wilson
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