This Week's Update

Greetings in Christ!

Weekly Notes

+      Paul Wee’s Third Play, One Church or Many?, is this Sunday at 6:30pm!
+      Funeral for Rev. Richard Boye is 7pm this Wednesday at Our Saviour in Christiansburg
+      We continue to pray for the RU community after the death of Kristin Greene, a freshman at RU. Keep the students, faculty, and staff close to your hearts.
+      Congregational Meeting – November 16th
+      Installation Service – November 23rd at 3pm

Devotional

Revelation 7:13-14
“Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from... These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

This week, we commemorate All Saints Sunday. As we give thanks for the loved ones who have joined the church triumphant, remembering them name by name, we can often wonder: “Who were these people, and where did they come from?”

This is fairly innocuous question at first. We wonder about their worldly identities – a child and maybe a parent, who had a particular job and enjoyed certain activities – as well as the journey that brought them places. We wonder because the church family reaches far beyond most of our experience. We are sisters and brothers with people we’ve never met, whose stories we’ve never known. On All Saints Sunday, we gather to remember those we literally can’t call to mind.

But what makes saints out of us sinners is that Christ, who gathers the church, calls us all to mind. Christ is the one who brings us out of our great ordeals, who cleanses us of our sin and prepares us for eternal life in the Kingdom of God. We celebrate the lives of all the saints, whatever their history, their origin, or their ability, because God brings us all together in Christ.

So, this week, look around the church, ask yourself how you might call to mind your brothers and sisters in a way that honors God and honors these people. How might we reach beyond our own boundaries of perception and experience to embrace all those who God loves and serves? And of course, that means everyone.