This week's readings are 1 Thessalonians 4:13-end and Matthew 25:1-13.

This Sunday is Remembrance Sunday, dedicated to remembering those whose lives have been lost, or affected by war.  It's not really as if we need the focus at the moment, our news and papers seem full of stories of violence and atrocity.  It seems like barely a day goes by in which conversation doesn't at some point move to the subject.  Those conversations have different characters - some are full frank exchanges of views (sometimes respectfully articulated, sometimes not), others recognise from a distance that they are approaching a difficult subject and skitter safely away.  One question, however, seems to me to have popped up in or around pretty much all of them - why?  Why do we, as human beings, keep doing this to ourselves?  Why can't we learn the lessons of the past?  Why do we continue turning to violence and inflicting such suffering on each other?

The really strange thing is that you're very hard pressed to find anyone of sound mind who thinks it's a good idea.  Call it deliberate naivety, but I'd even extend that to many perpetrators of violence and instigators of war - my suspicion is that the vast majority of them would all on most days agree that war and violence are bad things, and the world would be better off without them.

So what gives?  My theory is that it's an addiction.  The NHS defines addiction as 'not having control over doing, taking or using something to the point where it could be harmful to you.'.  Does that not sound like humankind's relationship to warfare? We know it's bad, and destructive but we do it anyway- because it feels like the best, quickest, or surest way of getting what we want in any given moment - be it freedom, national borders, or natural resources.

The problem is that our persistent return to such behaviour exposes the lie at the heart of our being, at the heart of humanity's inhumanity.  Knowing the world is broken, we cry 'Peace! Peace! Come to us!' But peace does not know us, and cannot abide our weapons, and our hate - and we return again and again to violence, destruction, and war for our fix.

The evidence lies in our history that this is our pattern, and that we are powerless to do anything about it.  We have yet to find in our strength a solution.

The good news, is that admitting our powerlessness over something, and that our lives have become unmanageable is a good place for addicts to be; it's widely recognised as the first step towards recovery.

The challenge, though, are the next steps - to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us; and to put our trust utterly in that power and his ability rather than our own; and to be ready to engage with the change of lifestyle that will demand of us, and the ongoing discipline of bringing ourselves to that power for his correction and care.  Or, to put it in the words of Matthew's gospel, we need to become people who look at Jesus and cry out 'Lord! Lord!' and mean it.

It may be simple, but it's not comfortable, and it's not easy.  

We may not be privileged to be leading nations; but we can make this simple, difficult decision, constantly in our own lives - and bless ourselves, and those over whom we do exhibit power, by its transforming power.  We can commit to the hard work of bringing ourselves regularly into the presence of God, and allowing him to lift the burden of the much harder work of reforming us into the people he creates us to be.

We may not be able to change the world entire in one go, but we can change our tiny part.  And if we can all take just one step towards peace then when you put those steps together we may discover that we've been carried a fair way down the road.