“Faith is the assurance that the best and holiest dream is true after all.” Beuchner, 2017, 52)

By Morgan Welch

Oh God of all the Saints,

We come to you as a people not simply as individuals. We gather together and pray to you as a community of Saints, both living and in glory. God, you remind us that saints are not just the faces we find in the portraits of grand churches and cathedrals, but saints are constantly surrounding us in our day-to-day lives

We are grateful for our everyday saints. For those who have lived their lives in such a way that they taught us more by how they lived than by what they said. Lord God thank you for the 9-5 workers, the teachers who taught us to read, the neighbor across the street who brought us a meal in a time of need, the nurses and midwives who stood by our side as we bore new life into this world. We give you thanks for the coaches that didn’t give up on us, for parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, and even mere strangers. God of divine relationship, through these, our ordinary and everyday saints, we have grown closer to you and to one another.

Lord, hold us gently in your love. Our hearts are tender because we long to, once again, be with those whom we have lost. You remind us also that our recollections of one another are worth more than all the riches in this world.

God you are the grand quiltmaker, piecing our individual stories together, binding our threads to one another, and connecting us all into a vessel of peace and comfort in the midst of an ever-changing world. Lord, forgive us for the ways in which we have tried to cut ties with your saints. It can be tempting to only connect with those who think, speak, and pray like we do, but, God of all people, you are constantly challenging us to work together to create different patterns and color combinations as you piece together our stories in your tapestry of life.

Merciful God, you hold us and challenge us, you make us unique as individuals and yet we are made for one another. Thank you for showing us your love and inviting us to be a part of your saints.

We ask all of these things in the name of your son, the one who taught us to pray together.

Amen