An All Saints reflection on death

God has swallowed up death. God has absorbed it into God's body on the cross and at the beginning of time.

Death has never been separate from God. There is no place - even in death - where you are unmoored from God’s loving embrace. For God is not a God of death. Rather, God is a God of resurrection who uses death as God's raw material to bring you into new life.

On All Saints, we honor and commemorate all of our dearly departed saints. Each death carries a sting. And in Christ, God has dampened that sting as God absorbs all death into God's body and gives the promise of resurrection to you.

Knowing that resurrection awaits you, may you find the security to fully feel the sting of death. May you find the freedom to grieve and mourn. To (like Jesus with the death of his friend Lazarus) allow the healing surges of grief to move through your body and your cleansing tears to soak into the soil beneath your feet.

May you know that death never has the last word. In that knowingness, may you allow death to be your companion bringing you more deeply into your life. May you allow the nearness of death to bring you closer to those who walk alongside you on this side of the grave. In God’s eternal promise of resurrection as is revealed in Christ, new life has been given to you in every breath.