Heavenly Witnesses

As we stand on the eve of All Saints Sunday worship, those who have run the course of this life and have entered into the eternal home prepared for them are much on our minds and hearts.  It is a holy time of remembering and giving thanks.  Death is no welcomed guest for any of us, but neither is it a stranger.  If we have lived more than a few years, we have lost some good friend too soon, or some beloved member of our family.  Sixty-five years ago my father died and only this year did my mother follow him in death.  While I will not be in a service of worship in a church setting tomorrow, I will be calling their names as well as the names of others.  

Over the years All Saints Sunday came to be time of a growing awareness that while I am here, they are there.  Many times when I offered the Holy Meal to the gathered community, it was with a sense that we were not alone.  In my minds eye it seemed that the Table before us somehow was mysteriously extended beyond the thin veil of separation into the realm of the eternal in such a way that the communion of the saints was indeed experienced.   One of my favorite passages of Scripture speaks of the gathering of the saints.  In Hebrews 12:1, the Word of God creates an image with the words, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses..."    I have never dwelt much on trying to figure out the eternal home toward which I daily walk, but I have always found great comfort from this Biblical image of the gathered saints. 

As we walk into the experience of All Saints Sunday, it becomes a very personal moment for so many of us.  It is not an ordinary service of worship, but one where our hearts and spirits reach out to embrace those who live in the realm of the invisible.  How they live, I do not know.  But, I know they do live for Christ has been raised from the dead and, therefore, we shall one day live alongside of these saints as we become a part of that great cloud of heavenly witnesses.