Today, I want to offer something a little different. I want to offer you a guided meditation as our message and prayer. It’s an ancient form of prayer, practiced in many traditions, and today we offer it to the God we know in Christ. I invite you to read this slowly. Close your eyes as you are able and take the prayer into your heart. Begin by taking a couple of deep breaths. Breathe in God’s Spirit, breathe out. Breathe in God’s Spirit. Breathe out…

I invite you now to picture in your mind’s eye someone you love. This could be someone you know who needs healing, someone who is troubled, or someone who is carrying a lot on their plate… Get them in your mind’s eye, and ask: May God protect you… May God fill you with joy… May God give you health… May God give you peace… Continue to hold them in your mind. (You might even call them by name.) May you be protected… May you be joyful… May you be healthy… May you be at peace…

Now, this might be a little bit harder. I invite you to shift your focus for just a moment and offer these same prayers, these blessings, not to others, but to yourself. Say to yourself (and you might even call yourself by name): May God protect you… May God fill you with joy… May God give you health… May God give you peace… (pause a moment or two) May I be protected… May I be joyful… May I be healthy… May I be at peace… May I be protected… May I be joyful… May I be healthy… May I be at peace…

We offer you these our prayers today, in all humility and hope, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Yesterday, in our church, one by one, we read the names of everyone in our church family who died this past year. After each name, a bell. Then a few seconds of silence before the next.

I’ve come to love that silence. I call to mind each person in those few seconds and I sense their presence still with us.

Yesterday was All Saints’ Day. The church has an old phrase for what that silence holds: the communion of saints. It means we belong to a family far larger than the people we can see. It stretches around the globe today, and back across every time and place, to everyone who has trusted in Christ.

One of our elders once told me it runs the other way, too. The communion of saints includes people who aren’t even born yet. People who will one day sit where we sit… 

Paul wrote of “the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.” (Ephesians 3:14–15)

Every family. In heaven and on earth. One family.

Maybe you’re carrying a name of your own today. Someone whose chair will be empty at the table this month. That ache is real, and nothing here asks you to hurry past it. But you are not grieving alone. And the one you miss is still held in the same love that holds you.

Today’s prayer comes from George MacLeod, who led the rebuilding of the ancient abbey on the island of Iona, off the coast of Scotland. 

Prayer: Be thou, triune God, in the midst of us as we give thanks for those who have gone from the sight of earthly eyes. They, in thy nearer presence, still worship with us in the mystery of the one family in heaven and on earth… If it be thy holy will, tell them how we love them, and how we miss them, and how we long to be with them again. Strengthen us to go on in loving service of all thy children. Thus shall we have communion with thee and, in thee, with those who have gone before us. Thus shall we come to know within ourselves that there is no death and that only a veil divides, thin as gossamer. Amen.

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Today’s message was written by Rev. Dr. Roger Kunkel, founder of Dial Hope.

Today I want to suggest an exciting idea - I want you to try giving yourself away. 

I once knew a man who suffered a nervous breakdown, during which he sat for months in gloom and mental darkness. One day I suggested he try to turn off his dark, depressing thoughts by practicing thanksgiving. I said, "Start thinking of people who greatly helped you in your life."

So, he wrote an elderly school teacher, Miss Elaine Smith, who had been a positive influence on his life. A reply came, written in the shaky handwriting of an aged lady. "Dear Willy," she wrote, "When I read your letter I was blinded by tears, for I remember you as a boy, and as I think of you now I see you as a little fellow in my class. You have warmed my old heart. I taught school for fifty years. Yours is the first letter of thanks I ever received from a student, and I shall cherish it until I die." 

Friend of Dial Hope, writing a letter of thanks - a project like that - may involve taking a little time - but it's an opportunity to give a little of yourself, and really that's the best you can give. Strangely, when you give yourself, you find yourself. 

Let us pray: God of hope, we come to you when our hope is vanquished, and our faith is small. We come to you when the promise of the "good life" has been found lacking, when clothes and cuisine, cars, and cappuccinos become insufficient nourishment for the hunger of the human spirit. We come to you because we have nowhere else to go. O God, save us from ourselves; from self-indulgence, and self-idolization. Heal us from the sickness of the body but even more from the sickness of the soul. May we get caught up in the current of your compassion, the flood of your forgiveness and so lose ourselves in the wide ocean of your love. In the name of the risen Christ. Amen.

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There's an old story about a little girl talking with her grouchy uncle about whales. The uncle insisted it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a person. Their throats are just too small.

"Jonah was swallowed by a whale," the girl said.

Irritated, the uncle repeated himself. Physically impossible.

"Well," she said, "when I get to heaven, I'll ask Jonah."

"And what if Jonah didn't go to heaven?" the uncle said. "What if he went the other direction?"

"Then you ask him!"

It's a funny story. But the point of Jonah isn't what kind of fish it was, or how it all happened.

Here's something easy to miss. The fish wasn't the punishment. It was the rescue. Jonah was sinking. The water was closing over him, seaweed wrapped around his head. And that's when God sent the fish.

From inside it, Jonah prayed. And his prayer sounds a lot like one of the psalms. Psalm 130 begins, "Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord." And it ends with this: "O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem." (Psalm 130:1, 7)

That's the promise. Not that God will give us every desire of our heart. No. But when things seem hopeless, when everything is falling apart, when there's no way forward, God has great power to redeem.

Wherever you are today, even if it feels like the belly of the fish, may you remember: you are not beyond the reach of that power.

Prayer: God of our salvation, you rescued your people from slavery. You brought water from a rock. You raised Jesus from the dead. Our messes don't get the last word. Sin and heartache and despair don't get the last word. You do. Bring good out of what is broken, beauty out of what is horrible, light out of the dark. We turn our problems, our worries, and our lives over to you again this day. We hope in you, through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Many years ago, our family went to a summer church camp. One morning in Bible study, a man shared a story from his childhood.

His family always went to church. It was a big part of their lives. They also spent a lot of time outdoors: fishing, hiking, camping. But somehow, the two never merged. Church was church. The outdoors was the outdoors.

Then one day, as a young boy, he was wandering along a creek near their lodge, and he found an injured blue jay.

He picked it up. And as he held it, he was struck by the markings on its feathers. They were so intricate, they looked hand-painted.

And then it dawned on him. They were hand-painted. By the very hand of God.

From that moment on, he said, his faith began to grow. God wasn't bound to a building. God was alive, creating and re-creating, in the world all around him.

Notice what he was holding. Not a perfect bird. An injured one. Small and hurting, in the palm of a child's hand.

Jesus once said, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father… So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows." (Matthew 10:29, 31)

The same hand that painted every feather knows when a single bird falls.

And that same hand is holding you.

Prayer: Creator God, you stretched out the heavens and flung the stars across the sky. You painted the butterfly and the blue jay, and you made us, too. Give us eyes to see your handiwork in the world around us. And when we are hurting, hold us in your hand, and let us know how much we are worth to you. Amen.

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