The Meaning of Remembrance…

Our thoughts have been turned to some words that give much meaning to remembrance, some words by Clara Edwards:

Silently into the night I go,
Into the starry night of heavenly blue;
What matters where the road may lead
If I but come again at last to you.

This is an expression of the hope that lingers in the heart when someone loved is lost.
It doesn’t matter how long we live, always there is the certainty of separation. There have been times in human history when the average length of life was half or less what it is now. And in sacred writ we read of times when men lived much longer than we now live. But however short or long they lived, and however short or long we live, still, even if we doubled the mortal length of life, there is always the certainty of separation.
To present a personal side to the subject: All the people I knew in the earliest years of my youth, who were then as old as I am now, have since left this life. No matter how sweet life was to them, how great their service, how brilliant their minds, how loved their loved ones, they are all gone. Not one of them is left⎯no matter who loved them, no matter whom they loved, no matter what kind of lives they lived.
And even if all of us, right now, were to double the length of our mortal lives, we should still face the fact of separation⎯and whether tomorrow or fifty years from tomorrow it would still be soon, too soon for losing those we love. If remembrance were all the immortality we had, we should have little indeed, because if we were not to continue, there would be no more remembrance.
But the Lord God has given us much more than remembrance. He has given us everlasting life, and we would witness the certainty of our souls, and from the words of the prophets, from reason and revelation, and from the very awareness within us; that remembrance means what it means because it is remembrance not of what is forever lost, but of what we may return to.

The countless weary steps I do not heed
Tho’ they be over land or boundless sea;
I care not where the road may lead
If I but come again at last to thee.

And this, thank God, is the meaning of remembrance.