I’ve been trying to read a book since I came home from holidays in the summer, but I still haven’t managed to get it finished for today, specifically, because it is about Harry Patch and the book is, “The last Fighting Tommy”. He is not the oldest veteran of World War One, but the oldest who actually fought in the trenches, at 110 years of age. A real human interest story and it is bound to be a classic in the sense that Harry Patch was not unique among millions of his comrades who endured that prolonged and supreme test of nerve and courage. But, uniquely, as the last survivor, he embodies them all.

It is an incredible and honest tale of an 18 year old just about to turn 19, a story of a war to end all wars...

How wrong we were, but how right we were to hope for it.

Certain events of last week gripped the world and after some 22 months of campaigning, Barack Obama was elected the first black President-elect of the Untied States. He won by a majority of 365 Electoral College votes (Although I’ve also read 349) to 162. The winning post was 270! You know all the statistics, and I must admit, I have been kind of following the elections as they have unfolded. Near the beginning, I was quite shocked at the Republican’s nomination of John McCain and then perhaps even more shocked, more recently, at Sarah Palin’s nomination as his running mate for the Presidency, a person he had only met once previously. I would’ve picked her myself if it went on looks, but I’m shallow, and I think the Republican Party thought the American ‘masses’ were shallow also. On Question time on the BBC, shortly after McCain’s choice had been announced, a question posed by a member of the audience asked the panel if John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin was a good move. Every single one of the panel that evening, without fail, said that it was a clever move, although so many now are saying very different things.

How often we seem to get things wrong.

You may remember that very early on, expert pundits could only predict a Republican victory for the Presidency. A Democrat in the White House was unthinkable. I felt then that there was a certain arrogance about them. The Democrats were going to make history either way with Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama running for the Democrat nomination, because if either won the presidential vote, there would be the first woman or the first black as President. In fact, the entire process was destined for the history books, because neither an African-American nor a female had ever achieved either posts of President or Vice-President! (And, by the way, Joe Biden is the first Roman Catholic to hold the post of Vice President!)

As we approached this weekend, perhaps some of the excitement has died down, but there is no doubt that on the morning of the 5^th November we woke up to history being made.

In my own life-time, we have had the historic words of Martin Luther King spoken on the 28^th August 1963, ringing in the ears of civil rights activists across America.

Obama, himself, epitomised the struggle when he referred to Ann Nixon Cooper, the 106 year old who remembers when she was judged by the colour of her skin rather than the content of her character. And the question is now, whether the election of Barack Obama is the realisation of that dream of Martin Luther King, all those years ago!

There are many sound-bites that can be taken from the last number of days, but one has stuck in my mind on the day of polling. An older, hippy-type American came out of the Voting station and said to the camera that he has never been as excited about an election since he voted for Kennedy in, was it 1960? And that was at a time when the whole of the evangelical right-wing of America was praying fervently that Kennedy would not be President.

How wrong we can all be sometimes... because as a President, he turned out to be not that bad!

The election of Barack Obama as the future (44^th) President of the US, has elicited a new sense of hope and expectation within America and across the world, even in this most difficult time when the economy is depressed and war is rampant, perhaps it is because of those things! But, America, at last can be seen in a different light; the kind of hope that America has always portrayed and represented.

When Harry Patch went to the front line in World War One, he was a part of a war that was so appalling in its violence and scale of death that it was meant to be the war to end all wars.

How terribly wrong we could be, because only 21 years later the world found itself plunged into yet another war of gigantic proportions.

The simple point on this Remembrance Sunday is that however wrong we may be about things, where would we be without hope?

Matthew Chapter five is a classic lesson for Remembrance Sunday. It is the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In a single moment, Jesus is turning all we know completely on its head. Every word of Jesus is a bombshell!

It’s all about turning an upside world the right side up!

How we have so often got things wrong, in our thoughts and actions and ideals. If only we could listen, for there is so much hope in those words of Jesus. What is wrong with hope, for without it, we are lost completely.