Remembrance at Rimington: 100 Years On

I attended a busy meeting at Rimington’s Memorial Institute on Friday evening. Our local historian was showing photographs of village men who went off to fight in the Great War. Today we commemorate the centenary of its conclusion. It was helpful putting pictures to names and seeing the farms and cottages from which those young men went, but to which they did not return. One of them, John Parkinson, lived at Chapel House, which today we know as the Manse. When the telegram arrived, how Mrs Parkinson, his mother, must have wept. Our own little war memorial which serves as our communion table will this morning host our wreath as we remember those who did not return.

And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more

Isaiah 2:3-4