All Saints Day
1 November 2026
Today is All Saints' Day. In a congregation our size, that word does not call to mind statues or stained glass. It calls to mind names — the people who taught us the hymns we still sing, who sat in the same chair every Sunday for forty years, who made the coffee and set out the chairs and told us the truth when we needed to hear it. Some of them are still here. Some of them we have buried.
All Saints' Day is the church's way of saying one thing plainly: we do not forget them, and we do not believe God has either.
The psalm that belongs with this day is Psalm 34, and it is not a gentle psalm. It comes from someone who had been through it — afraid, hunted, hungry, and then delivered. Read it slowly.
I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.
I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.
O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him. O fear the Lord, you his holy ones, for those who fear him have no want. The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
Psalm 34:1–10, 22 (NRSV)
Three things worth holding on to today.
First, "at all times." Not only on the good Sundays. The psalm does not pretend that grief is finished, or that the people we miss are a problem to be solved. It says praise and sorrow can live in the same mouth — and in a congregation like ours they often do.
Second, "taste and see." That is an invitation, not a test. You do not have to arrive with your faith sorted out, and you do not have to bring anything with you except yourself. We ask no one to sign a creed. That matters on All Saints' Day, because the saints we remember were not perfect people. They were ordinary ones who kept showing up.
Third, verse 22. "The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned." If you have ever lain awake wondering about someone you loved — whether they were good enough, whether it was too late, whether God was keeping a list — this is the verse to keep. The psalm does not claim that none of them were flawed. It says that none who take refuge in him will be condemned. That is the whole promise, and it is enough.
So today, say the names. Say them out loud if you can, or quietly on the way home. The ones who taught you to sing, the ones who made room for you, the ones whose absence still has a shape. They are not forgotten — not by us, and not by God.
And if this year you are the one who feels more like the grieving than the remembered, take heart. The same psalm that begins in praise ends with a promise for anyone who runs to God for shelter. There is room for you in it too.