Last week I was putting together the music roster for Sunday, 25th April, and my girlfriend was watching.

“Are you going to play the Anzac hymn?” she asked.

“There’s an Anzac hymn??”

“Yep. It’s Abide with me.”

“Hmm…that’s a nice hymn,” I said. “But no, we are not playing the Anzac hymn at church…”

But I imagine there were plenty of churches commemorating Anzac day, in a variety of ways. It got me thinking - should we acknowledge Anzac day in church? Not just Anzac day, but any commemorative day - after all, we often have Mother’s Day and Father’s Day services, and I’ve even seen Valentine’s Day acknowledged. I imagine some hard core, old school C of E churches commemorate the Queen’s Birthday. You could probably do something tasteful with Australia Day, and Labor Day even.

My feeling at the moment is that we should leave these commemorations alone - all of them. There are plenty of appropriate ways of celebrating these events, and we can do so as we choose. But we only have an hour or two every week for church. It’s not a lot - let’s make it all about Jesus.