Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Official Report 583KB pdf

---

Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. The first item this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is General Sir Richard Dannatt, who was the guest speaker at this morning’s national prayer breakfast.

As we meet this afternoon, Scottish soldiers will be laying their lives on the line in Afghanistan on behalf of our nation. They deserve our admiration and thanks for being willing to do their duty on our behalf.

At this moment, it is very likely that some of them will be facing issues of life and death—making instant decisions about who lives and who dies. Soldiers know better than anyone else the close proximity of death in battle, and the yearning for life itself. When death confronts us, the bigger issues of life become very clear. None of us knows when death will confront us, and the only certainty in life is that one day it will.

I read the following account of a young soldier who had just shot his first enemy fighter in Afghanistan.

“Afterwards I sat there and I thought, ‘Hang on. I just shot someone.’ I had a brew and that. I didn’t get to sleep that night. I just lay there all night thinking, ‘I shot someone.’ It’s something strange. A really strange feeling. You feel like, you know, a bit happy with yourself—I’ve done my job, it’s what I’ve come here for, know what I mean? He’s Taliban and I’ve got one of them. You feel quite chuffed about it.

Then you’re feeling, like, you know... Well, sad. You’re thinking... well, you know... the, the geezer’s another human being at the end of the day, like. Then you get the feeling, well, you know, it’s either him or me. And then you’re thinking... I think people get, like, you know, religious then as well. You’re thinking, well, in the bigger picture, if there is like a Geezer up there and a Geezer downstairs, what does that mean for me now I’ve just shot someone? Is that me done for? Am I going to hell or what? And all of that went through my mind that night, for hour after hour after hour.”

It is often said that there are no atheists in a foxhole, and none of us knows when we are going to meet our maker. But if there is

“a Geezer up there and a Geezer downstairs,”

I am absolutely certain that I know which of the two I want to meet: the God of love and hope, “up there”.