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The
Lightstand Magazine
1987
• April • Reflections on the way
by Bro. Robin Lamplough
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I
have just spent several days, like Legion, among the graves.
It was a thought-provoking experience. I had in my charge
a group of senior schoolboys and our primary objective, using
an Imperfect sketch-map, was to locate the scattered British
Boer War graves on the southern slopes of the Twin Peaks,
east of Spioenkop, near Ladysmith. Having located them, we
had undertaken to clear them of undergrowth and re-paint their
markers.
HARD TO FIND A grave Is a hard thing to find in a couple of
hectares of chest-high summer grass. One has almost literally
to stumble upon it. The natural world has no superstitious
respect for the dead. Grass grows and seeds fall and fires
burn to just the same effect whether or not a man is buried
beneath them. The words "dust thou art and unto dust
shalt thou return" assumed a more pointed significance
in the veld of northern Natal. After eighty-seven years, only
the puny efforts of men to circumvent the Divine pronouncement
distinguished the patch of ground in which a soldier was once
laid to rest: a rusting marker and a few strands of tangled
wire.
And when a grave was located, we were little the wiser about
its occupant. Apart from a serial number, the marker bore
no distinguishing details. The stock statement: "Here
lies a brave British soldier" failed to conceal the ugly
truth that those in authority who had sent him to war had
forgotten his name: that because he was one of the "other
ranks" nobody ever regarded him as important enough to
remember In that way. And, more than likely, that patriotic
cliche often contained a lie also. Not all soldiers die brave
ly, especially in battle: but who is to know, once the smoke
has cleared, the particular circumstances of each?
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MARBLE
MONUMENT One of our secondary objectives was to locate, on the saddle
between the Twin Peaks, a marble regimental monument, recently pushed
over by vandals, and (as far as we were able) to put the pieces
together again. The shattered memorial seemed to emphasize the finality
of death, deriding the monumental mason's finest efforts at
permanence. And the vandals who destroyed his work, whether they
were treasure-seekers or wished to make some political statement,
demonstrated quite plainly that the Adamic selfishness of man lives
on in spite of everything.
My mind kept returning to the thought of the graves of the faithful
and to the resurrection. How different It will be then! No need
for the angels to quarter the ground in search of burial places,
even without physical markers of any kind. No need for empty words
to hide official Ignorance, because "precious In the sight
of the Lord Is the death of his saints" (Ps. 116.15) and He
knows them all not only by name but Intimately by character also.
No need for vain monuments which are unable to withstand the cupidity
or the enmity of other men. No matter that the years or the centuries
or the millenia have rolled over those graves and that their occupants
have so mingled with the dust from which they were taken that they
are Indistinguishable from It. Because once, almost two thousand
years ago, in a garden, a stone was rolled aside and the Prince
of Life emerged from the tomb.
COMFORT ONE ANOTHER No wonder the Apostle was moved to write: "But
I would not have you ignorant, brethren,... that ye sorrow not,
even as others which have no hope." (1 Thessalonians 4.13)
No wonder he wrote in another place: "If Christ be not risen
then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain." (1
Corinthians 15.14). Because the resurrection of the Son of God is
our guarantee that those who sleep in Christ will be raised from
death: and, furthermore, as Paul told the men of Athens, it
is our guarantee also that God has "appointed a day in the
which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom
he hath ordained." (Acts 17.31).
"Wherefore, comfort one another with these words." (1
Thess. 4.18).
R.L.
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