Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,"
Hebrew 12:1 NIV
This Sunday, we commemorate All Saints’ Sunday. It’s a day we remember the saints in our own lives. Especially those in our church family we lost this past year. The ones that have shaped us, who have made us who we are. They may not have been well-known in the public sphere; they may not have a building, or a street named after them, but they hold a special place in our hearts.
It’s a day when we stop to recall and realize that this all didn’t start with us. We are linked with history and the past and we realize and are reminded of the reality. The author Maya Angelou said that “We’ve all been paid for.” Every time we come into the church, we have a sense of our forebears sitting on their perch, staring at us, Abraham, Sarah, Ruth, Jacob, Stephen, Mary. And the saints of this church that are gone, who for what they paid for in the past, are why we are here. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, as the book of Hebrews says. We are just a part of the divine story that started long before we got here and will continue long after we are gone, that is richer and broader than our own little personal bit part in the story.
So, what is a saint in our lives? Hear these words of author Barbara Brown Taylor as she describes a saint, “What makes a saint? Extravagance. Excessive love, flagrant mercy, radical affection, exorbitant charity, immoderate faith, intemperate hope, inordinate love. None of which is an achievement, a badge to be earned or a trophy to be sought; all are secondary by-products of the one thing that truly makes a saint, which is the love of God, which is membership in the body of Christ, which is what all of us, living and dead, remembered and forgotten, great souls and small, have in common.
Think about the saints in your life. Most likely they are ordinary people with an extraordinary willingness to take belief and turn it into action. And an extraordinary willingness to make some promises that stretch out over the years to us, to persevere, to persist, to give their word and keep their word. Yes, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses from those who have gone before us. And on this Sunday, we will rejoice and say a word of thanks to those saints in our lives and in the life of the church.
#AllSaints'Sunday #faith #legacy
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