The beginning and the end
from Helen
When I was in my late teens a family joined our Church. The youngest in the family was a little boy of about 3. He really enjoyed Church and from Sunday School heard that my Mum was called Heather and I of course am Helen. The little boy called my Mum Hevver and me Heaven. Never was a child so correct in their terminology. I am clearly heavenly and perfect - well maybe when I am asleep and not snoring !!
We all have the most amazing pictures of heaven. In a song I used to sing on youth camp we always sang, “Heaven, is a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace I am going to see my father’s face coz heaven is a wonderful place.”
In our reading from the book of Revelation (21:1-6a) we heard of the wonder of heaven. A picture of a new heaven and a new earth. A place where there would be no more mourning or crying, a place where God wipes away tears. An amazing place where everything is made new.
The picture of heaven is one where God is not only in control but He is making everything better, so much better that we couldn’t even imagine it. That’s why we all try so hard to imagine and describe heaven.
The most important words from God in this picture of what can only be termed as perfection, and a perfection that is more than we can even begin to imagine is, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.”
We are always in the arms and hands of God who loves us. God holds us close and we know we can trust Him because He not only made everything but He stays with us and in the end all will be well and everything will make sense.
The problem is though that all of this involves so much trust and faithfulness to God on our part and frankly we are human beings and so we don’t always do the trusting bit well.
Today we are looking back in the Church as we celebrate All Saints which happened on 1st November and is the day when we both give thanks for all the saints who have gone before us and are challenged to be more like the saints in their trust of Jesus. In our intercessions we will be remembering All souls which was on Friday as we think of those whom we love but no longer see who have gone before us. We remember all that they have shown and taught us and all the love that has been shared.
Today as we remember the saints we look forward to the promises of heaven that we heard about in the reading from Revelation. When I picture this reading I think of all the saints and all of us worshipping God together. It is an amazing thought. Every time we worship we are praising God and joining with all those who have worshipped before and those in heaven in the communion of saints who still worship now.
It is an amazing image that we are part of. Heaven is where the saints are continuously worshipping God but we are saints here as well.
I may have told this story before but it is a rather lovely one so I am going to tell it again.
A child was being shown around a Church and she looked at 4 stained glass windows. The first stained glass window was really red, the next blue, the next green and finally yellow. The child noticed that the sun was shining through all these windows and when she was told that the stained glass windows were all pictures of saints she announced that a saint was, ‘somebody that lets the light shine through.’
We are saints, we are to point the way to God by our words and actions. As followers of Jesus we are all saints who are trying to live more like God day by day. We may not have a perfect life, we may not always seem or feel very saintly but being a saint is about letting the love and light of God shine through our lives.
We trust in God the beginning and the end. We have a picture of heaven and of God in control. As saints we are joining in the hymn of unending praise.
We don’t always have an easy time and when we think about saints, or people accuse us of being saints it is as if we are meant to be perfect. Once when I was teaching a student asked me if when we get to heaven we get to choose our heavenly bodies because if we did, she said, she was going to choose the body of Julia Roberts.
Now we do all have an image of what looking and being perfect might be like. We all have an idea of how we would like life to be and to be honest I am sure we all have times when we really don’t want to be nice, to be like Jesus, because it is hard work. Times when we don’t want to be perfect !
Then we remember though that with all the saints who have gone before us, those who sacrificed so much so that they could follow God in their lives that they weren’t always perfect. Things didn’t turn out like they expected but they knew as we know that God is the Alpha and the Omega, which is the beginning and end of the Greek alphabet but more than that the beginning and end of everything. God is in control He knows us, He loves us and He wants us to turn to Him so that He can wipe away every tear and give us strength for each day to follow Him and to try to be more like Him.
May we remember that God is our everything and all He wants is that we turn to Him and try to be more like Him day by day with the hope and knowledge in our hearts that He is the first and the last, the beginning and the end. AMEN
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