Foundry United Methodist Church Rev. Dean Snyder, Senior Minister
To All Generations Sunday, November 6, 2005 All Saints Day - Meditation
Ephesians 3: 14-21 John 14: 1-4, 18-19, 25-27 Rev. Dean Snyder	We are Americans, and Americans tend to be a greedy people. We want long lives. We want good health. We want enough affluence to get whatever we want, and we also want life to make sense to us. As a nation, the Christian Church is talking a lot about knowing our purpose and living a purpose-driven life. But the book of Ephesians says that our purpose is greater than we can ask, or know, or imagine. There is a power from God at work in us – in you, in me, in us together, and in all followers of Jesus who have ever lived. There is a power at work in us that is accomplishing more than we could even think to ask for or imagine. This power at work in us extends to all generations, the generations that have preceded us and the generations that are yet to come. Through us, God is doing something more than we can ever know. But we want to know it. We want to have a solid sense of what it is that we have been sent here for and what we need to accomplish in this lifetime before we die. But, what we really need is to sit in the presence of this power within us until we come to the place that, without knowing, we can trust. God is doing something in my life even when I can’t understand what’s going on. Maybe even most especially when I can’t understand, God is doing something. There is a power at work within us, more than we know to ask for or could imagine, and it extends from generation to generation. We think today of the martyrs and the saints who have gone before us. Think of those Christians persecuted for their faith in Rome during the earliest days of this movement of the followers of Jesus Christ. Think of those who could never ever have thought to pray for or imagine us sitting here today worshipping together in a place where we have the freedom to do so, who would never have thought to ask or imagine that. God is doing something in our midst today…bigger, more glorious than we can imagine. Our goal when we gather here is to join our lives to the saints who have come before us and the saints who will live in generations to come, to join our lives to them and not to know. We don’t know. We can’t know. We can’t imagine, but to join our life to theirs…and to trust. And finally…to surrender and to say: “Here I am, God. I don’t understand much of what you are doing. I don’t understand much of how my life fits into it all, but this morning, I give myself, O God, to you. Use me not as I will, but as you will. Make me, O God, to be numbered with the saints and the martyrs who have gone before me and with all of those who will follow in our way.” www.foundryumc.org