All Saints Day

I don’t know how all this works. I really don’t. People think ministers have some secret knowledge, or direct access to answers about the mysteries of life, God, and how the two interact. Some may, but not me. When I think of my faith, I don’t think of a rock discovered, a sure and certain place on which to stand. Rather, my faith is more like a dream I’m desperate to catch.

The dream that swirls just beyond my grasp is that there’s a God who created this world and loves each and every one of us like a parent. Despite all the ways we mess up, God still loves us and always will. No exceptions. No qualifiers. It’s a dream that extends beyond this mortal life and includes the ages, or eternity, on the other side of the grave. I have no idea what that life on the other side will be like, and I am suspicious of anyone who tells me they do, and yet I reach for the dream because my heart needs it to be true. When close my eyes and think of all the people I’ve lost, I pray the dream is true. 

As a child I thought of heaven as a place, a place we enter and everyone we’ve lost is waiting at the gates to greet us as the long-lost children we’ve been. Because of the household I grew up in, I thought of heaven as a big party where everyone is laughing and loving each other while singing songs around a piano. I guess we all use our idea of happiness and make heaven like that. Regardless of how naive my vision may be, I trust the words of the great hymn, “we feebly struggle, they in glory shine.”

So, on this All Saints Day, I reach up once again and try to catch the dream. I close my eyes and pray that, in some way, the dream is true. I listen for the piano and all the happy voices signing, believing, one day, I will be singing with them.