Listen to the living

And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.’ (Matthew 22:31-32)

Listen to the living

At the Lord’s Table, I am often aware of a great crowd of people standing back of me, as I bless the bread and raise the cup. They watch and smile their approval, although no one can see them.

I feel their presence, and they lift me into the joy of knowing I belong to them and to the Love who joins us, even as I know that someday I will join them.

For they are every soul who has known and loved this Lord we receive into ourselves at that holy table.

Old friends are there, family members I have loved and laid to rest in the soil of this earth. My father is there, and I feel Grandma Miller; Bob and Fritz, and every soul who has ever blessed me.

As the years go by, that crowd gets larger, including faces I have served and loved at St. Timothy, people you know and love, too.

They are physically gone from us, yet they are so alive in our hearts and in this great cloud of witnesses that cheers us on, especially now.

Many of them faced greater crises and fears than those that haunt us during this time. And to a person they all say, “Keep on. Keep on. This time will pass. But Love who holds you never will.”

Listen to them. They know.

Pr. David L. Miller