Month: November 2026

Though Satan breaks our dark glass into shards
Each shard still shines with Christ’s reflected light,
It glances from the eyes, kindles the words
Of all his unknown saints. The dark is bright
With quiet lives and steady lights undimmed,
The witness of the ones we shunned and shamed.
Plain in our sight and far beyond our seeing
He weaves them with us in the web of being
They stand beside us even as we grieve,
The lone and left behind whom no one claimed,
Unnumbered multitudes, he lifts above
The shadow of the gibbet and the grave,
To triumph where all saints are known and named;
The gathered glories of His wounded love.
~Malcolm Guite “All Saints’ Day”

The ordinary saints, the ones we know,
Our too-familiar family and friends,
When shall we see them? Who can truly show
Whilst still rough-hewn, the God who shapes our ends?
Who will unveil the presence, glimpse the gold
That is and always was our common ground,
Stretch out a finger, feel, along the fold
To find the flaw, to touch and search that wound
From which the light we never noticed fell
Into our lives? Remember how we turned
To look at them, and they looked back? That full-
-eyed love unselved us, and we turned around,
Unready for the wrench and reach of grace.
But one day we will see them face to face.
~Malcom Guite “Ordinary Saints”

As grains of sand, as stars, as drops of dew,
Numbered and treasured by the Almighty Hand,
The Saints triumphant throng that holy land
Where all things and Jerusalem are new.

We know not half they sing or half they do,
But this we know, they rest and understand;
While like a conflagration freshly fanned,
Their love glows upward, outward, through and through.

Lo! like a stream of incense launched on flame
Fresh Saints stream up from death to life above,
To shine among those others and rejoice.

What matters tribulation whence they came?
All love, and only love, can find a voice
Where God makes glad His Saints, for God is Love.
~Christina Rossetti “As Grains of Sand“

At almost four in the afternoon, the
wind picks up and sifts through the golden woods.

The tree trunks bronze and redden, branches
on fire in the heavy sky that flickers

with the disappearing sun. I wonder
what I owe the fading day, why I keep

my place at this dark desk by the window
measuring the force of the wind, gauging

how long a certain cloud will hold that pink
edge that even now has slipped into gray?

Quickly the lights are appearing, a lamp
in every window and nests of stars

on the rooftops. Ladders lean against the hills
and people climb, rung by rung, into the night.
~Joyce Sutphen “On the Shortest Days” from Modern Love and Other Myths

We are created to reflect the Light sent from above, whether we are the smallest dewdrop, a grain of sand on an infinite beach, or the first rung on a ladder set for heaven.

We are here today due to sacrifices of ordinary saints who came before:
the parents who stayed up all night with our high fever measles,
the grandparents who nurtured us when our parents were too weary, the church members who prayed over us when we went astray.

We are who we are today because of people who invested in our surviving, who bore arms in foreign lands far from home, who strived to keep water and air clean, who grew good food not knowing who would benefit.

We are gifted from the reach of common grace that emanates from common people; grace such as this wrenches us away from caring only for ourselves and thrusts us into the lives of others.

We are all created in the image of a very personal God who knows our very folds and inner and outer flaws, but loves us nonetheless, reminding us to sacrifice self for the sake of the other, to reflect His Light no matter where He sends us.

We are unselved by the saints today: loved for who we are
yet created to love those we’ll never know.

Lyrics:
All around us and within us
And yet it’s only at times we notice
As real as rain, and soft as stardust
We know deep down, what nobody told us.

Chorus: Can’t you feel it ever closer
We breathe it in and we then we exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal
Standing closer to the veil

Now is just a, moving image
Not a ribbon, a start and end
There is a bird, a hidden singer
That calls and listens, and calls again

Centered down and moving outward
Sometimes almost, to sweet to bare
There are endless ways to reach home
Just keep walking and I’ll meet you there

Standing closer to the veil
There’s a blurring of the borders
And I swear that I heard voices
But every act of, simple kindness
Calls the kingdom down and all around us