We’ll celebrate their lives and their places in our community, and we’ll give thanks for those lives—and we’ll also give thanks that someday we’ll get to join them in the eternal community in God’s kingdom. Really, All Saints’ Day is a celebration of what the church is: not just those of us who gather in a specific building on a Sunday morning, but all of us who have trusted ourselves to Jesus, over all time, even anticipating the future. We celebrate our beloved community in its largest sense, and we give thanks, and we celebrate our hope.

In addition to a time for remembering members of this church, we will also have time in the service this weekend for you to remember anyone else in your lives who has been a Christian who has gone before us. You can even name them out loud if you like—there will be a time open to that. I’ll be thinking of my dad this Sunday—who will you be thinking about?

I’ll see you in church—

Becky

Prayer

Holy God, we thank you for all of those who have gone before us—for the ones who have shaped and taught us, for the ones who took us to church, for the ones who celebrated our milestones and prayed for us in our difficulties. We thank you for those who built our churches and wrote our hymns, who did the administrative work that made things run smoothly, and who served on committees to meet the changing challenges of our times. We thank you for the ones who led the music, the ones who asked difficult questions, and even for the ones whose personal habits or personalities challenged us to stretch our patience and our tolerance. We thank you for all of those who have gone before us, seeking you here and seeing you now. Grant that we might feel their support and their continuing presence in your church, made up of all Christians through all the ages. Amen.