"We fight for truth? We fight for God?
Poor slaves of lies and sin!
He who would fight for Thee on earth
Must first be true within.

Then, God of truth, for whom we long,
Thou who wilt hear our prayer,
Do Thine own battle in our hearts
And slay the falsehood there."

Thomas Hughes, 1822-96                  

Recently I came out of a dream with the words "We do not change the world through fighting but through working". But there is a battle to be faced as Thomas Hughes so wonderfully presents above.

With all the fear and talk of war, which even before this is published on 1 April, we may be immersed in, it is comforting to know that God will oversee all and is at work in many ways we cannot understand, no less in the world than in every individual's life.

I recently took a photograph of the Lychgate at St. Andrew's Church, Bishopstone. The snowdrops were bejewelling the ground; a sign of early Spring, the hope of Resurrection. Looking up the spelling of Lychgate, I discovered that lych was the name for a body. It was under the shelter of the Lychgate that the dead were brought before burial. So a Lychgate and snowdrops - a flower that pushes up through the hard cold soil into the harsh conditions of an early Spring - is a wonderful reminder of the blossoming at the end of struggle. Just as the red poppy is a reminder of the deaths of brave people who are tossed into history at a point when there is carnage and death, but whose sacrifice has given us today the freedom we know.