Self-Giving Saints

“Rejoice in God's saints, today and all days!
A world without saints forgets how to praise.
in loving, in living, they prove it is true:
The way of self-giving, Lord, leads us to you.”
--from a hymn by Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000)

All Saints Day is observed on November 1, 2014.  Take time on this day (and other days too!) to reflect on the persons who have lived faithfully before God and neighbor or helped form you as a person of faith to go and do likewise.

Saints of the Church may be the officially declared ones, identified through a process of discernment and declaration.  Saints may be found, hidden in the layers and levels of one's faith journey, discovered only in retrospect and really the type who didn't look for the spotlight or the fuss.  Nope, just plain spoken folk (or a little too cranky to sound like they fit the part) who kept the Gospel in their words and deeds alike. 

However they came to "be in that number" (to quote the Dixieland gospel standard), they got there by faith, hope and love, not of the world but of that other Kingdom/Reign that Jesus taught through parables that turned the world inside-out and topsy-turvy.  If you look closely at their lives, surely their stories are planted with mustard seed-size tales of "the way of self-giving" and perhaps even over-grown from the abundance that comes with such trust in God.

Thanks be to God for those who were, are, and yet to come.  May we join them in the holy endeavor to follow the pilgrim way of Jesus Christ!