A Prayer For All Saints’ Day

A Prayer for All Saints’ Day

November 1

O God who holds all time and trials,

All saints and all souls

In the palm of Your hand,

We thank You for the great cloud of witnesses

That goes before us.

Thank You that You have not abandoned our family

But have surrounded us by a great body of believers.

We know we do not enter or depart this world alone

But in the lineage of many—

Those we hold dear

And those we’ve heard stories of

And those who walked the earth

So much earlier than us

That we can only dream up who they might have been.

We thank You for the women and men

Of faith who went before us,

Who lived real-life struggles

And made real-life mistakes,

For their fingerprints on our world

Have much to teach us.

We thank You for the women and men

Of faith who went before us,

Who refused to give up on You, Lord,

Who walked ways that followed Jesus.

We imagine what it would be like

To meet them someday.

We turn all the questions we might ask

Over and over in our hearts.

We think of how we might run barefoot

On heaven’s path,

Welcomed into a Kingdom

Full of kin,

Through bloodlines and through adoption,

Ready to welcome us home.

For all the souls who have left this world,

For all those of great faith who sacrificed much,

We thank You for their examples

That show us which paths to take

And which to leave covered in brambles.

We pray that our sons and daughters would know

That no matter where life takes them,

They are never alone.

Your Spirit dwells within and among them,

And they have a great cloud of witnesses

That go before them.

By faith, help us show our children

What it is to run the race marked out for us.

Help us not lose heart.

Help us not grow weary.

By faith, help us walk

Like faithful generations before us,

Spanning dusty centuries and ancient ancestors,

Times and places.

May we know that faith

Is the confidence in what we hope for

And the assurance of what we do not see.

We wonder about all who prayed for this—

Right here where we are.

Help us teach our children

That they are welcomed into faith,

Brought here by the victories and defeats

Of the women and men before us—

That we get lifted on their shoulders

And by their prayers, too.

Hebrews 11:1–12:3