Hi everyone,

So I found it very hard to concentrate today. I got new early morning that a friend of mine passed away suddenly the day before. Being a pastor, a lot of people wonder if I’m just “used to” death, and if I’m just better equipped to handle it. Truth is, it still a shock. There is still sadness in knowing that I won’t see him or converse with him in the same way again. I still feel pain.

I mean, as the trope goes, he didn’t deserve this. His two young sons don’t deserve this. His loving wife, who is actually the reason I even know this guy, most certainly doesn’t deserve this. So why did it happen?

While I don’t have the answer to this, I know one thing: this man, regardless of how he led or didn’t lead his life, was, is, and always will be a child of God. We tend to throw the term “saint” around to describe only the extremely good, but my friend truly is a saint. Not because of what he did (he was super generous), what he said (he was really smart too), or how he acted (he was probably one of the most kind and friendly people I know), but because of what God did, what God said, and what God continues to do.

Life is tough. It has its ups and downs. We are both blessed and otherwise. But through it all, I am confident that God loves us, is with us, and regards us as saints.

I’ll miss you, buddy.

These are the readings for next week:
Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31
And a video of them being read:

I guess it seems like eerie timing that we are just a week away from All Saints Sunday, a day that we remember those that we’ve loved and lost, and see how they continue to live on with us in our hearts. It’s a day that we adorn the sanctuary differently, imagine our community differently, and praise God with a slightly different mindset.

In that, in our sorrow and sadness, we worship. In our hurts and pain, we give thanks. In our remembering those who have died, we remember how God has blessed us with them to begin with.

This doesn’t take away the sorrow and pain, but it gives us hope in knowing that our loved ones weren’t snatched away from us in malice, but they were given to us in love.

So these readings that that we get for this All Saints Sunday (especially the gospel), tell me how life is full of these ups and downs, these highs and lows, these blessings and woes, and how God continues to be with us through it all. Lifting us up, giving us strength, and declaring us all as saints who are forgiven and saved, healed and made whole, blessed and beloved, now and always.

All thanks and praise be to God. May your week be blessed.