If someone asked you to describe God and your relationship, what would you say? How would you begin to talk about all that God has done for you and has promised to do? The Bible gives us many pictures of God which may be a good place to start. God is creator. God is the Good Shepherd. God is Father. God is King.
A hymn we often sing gives a different picture of God. The hymn writer Isaac Watts wrote —O God, our help in ages past, our hope for year to come. Our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home. This verse echoes words we read in Psalm 90—Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. The Message translation puts it like this—God, it seems you have been our home forever, long before the mountains were born. Long before you brought the earth itself to birth—From once upon a time to kingdom come—you are God!
The poet Robert Frost once wrote—Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in. So often we think about God as something that we have to take in. God isn’t someone we get to hold, God surrounds us—fills us—and takes us in. God holds us! God has been our home from the very beginning. From everlasting to everlasting. Forever and always. God is our home. And we all remember what Dorothy said—There’s no place like home.
Our trouble comes from trying to figure out how we fit into that home. There is a myth out there that Christians have to be perfect people who have figured all of this God stuff out. The home that God creates is vast and has an odd assortment of relatives. For the most part, they are the relatives you don’t want staying with you too long. They are far from perfect, far from having things in perfect order. They are just people like you and I striving to follow God in an imperfect and sinful world.
You will remember that in Genesis, God took the dust, spit into it and made us. When we stand over an open grave, we hear the words—earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Isaac Watts’ hymn tells it like this—Time, like an ever rolling stream, soon bears us all away; we fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day.
We want the places, the people, and the things that we love to be eternal. But some of us want things to be as they were, others as they are, and still others, as they will be. We are transients, our time on earth is short, like a visit. And soon our years will come to an end and we shall be gone.
Psalm 90 calls us to pray—So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. Teach us, to reflect on the fact that we are mortal, that we are imperfect, that we are sinners, that we will die and now, O God, teach us to live. Martin Luther said it this way—Teach us to reflect on the fact that we must die, so that we become wise. We become wise not through living and seeking but by dying and turning to the one who died for us. Wisdom finds us- not because we have chosen to look for it but because in this life- we journey toward the grave- we understand life comes to an end.
We will know joys and gladness but we will also suffer and we will know pain and heartbreak. But wisdom also promises that the things of this life will pass away and a new life will be born in Christ. In Christ, God is our eternal home. It is a home that has been prepared for you.
November 6 we will gather to remember the saints in Christ, those who have died and now dwell in the presence of God. Philippians 3: 20 reminds us: Your home is in heaven. God is your address. Forget post office boxes and 911 addresses and GPS coordinates. Your home, your true home, is with your Father in Heaven.
Thanks be to God! Pastor Kristin
We remember those in our parish who have died since the last observation of All Saints Day. We will have a special service on Sunday, November 6 during which we will remember all who grieve especially the families and friends of:
Robert Paulson Kevin Dahlen Marjorie Iverson
Olive Wiskow Bernice Johnson Frances Aandal
Clyde Sorenson Lawrence Boutain Curtiss Quam
Jeff Lendobeja Susan Helgeland Florence Easthouse
Betty Stinar James Dahlen Alesia Limesand
Rev. Bruce Anderson Rev. Robert Dahlen
We also remember all in our lives we have loved and lost as we imagine the great reunion we will have when we too are called home.
A Litany of Remembrance – We Remember Them
by Rabbi Sylvan Kamens and Rabbi Jack Riemer
In the rising of the sun and in its going down, we remember them. In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter, we remember them. In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring, we remember them. In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer, we remember them. In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn, we remember them. In the beginning of the year and when it end,, we remember them. When we are weary and in need of strength, we remember them. When we are lost and sick at heart, we remember them. When we have joys we yearn to share, we remember them. So long as we live, they too shall live, f
or they are now a part of us, as we remember them.
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