For All the Saints

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

This Sunday in the liturgical church year is marked as All Saints' Day. In the church we are called to remember those Christians who have lived their faith in Jesus Christ and now are united with him in the Church Triumphant. My grandmother, Virginia Bland Patton (Mema to her grandchildren), entered the heavenly kingdom in March of this year. She lived a life of undying faith, and through her example showed the joyful life that we live as Christians.

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Mema was first a Christian. Her faith in the Presbyterian tradition shaped her entire outlook on her life. The love she knew in Jesus she shared with those around her. I was always told stories of her work as a Sunday school teacher, her hospitality in hosting the Women's Circle Bible Study or the Home Demonstration Club, how she visited those in her church who were sick or shut-in. Mema's faith was not some kind of doctrinal belief but a way of engaging her world.

As a girl Mema memorized a bible verse for each letter of the alphabet. When her Alzheimer's caused her to move to Knoxville into an assisted living home, I asked her to try and recite as many of these as she could remember, and I wrote them down. Her verse for the letter "B" was "Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only" (Jame 1:22). Accompany this with one of her own token phrases, "Let us be up and doing," and you begin to get an insight into how her faith shaped her life. I have spoken previously on thinking and speaking incarnationally; Mema lived incarnationally. It was through her deeds that she showed her faith. She took the Bible seriously and sought to show in her work the Good News of Jesus Christ.

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
we feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

As her grandson, what I learned most from Mema was how to live out love. There was nothing she loved more than her "dear ones," her four children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren. If you had only ever known of us through Mema, you would have thought that our family was made up of the most musically gifted, intelligent, beautiful, sweetest people that ever existed. Mema saw us not as fallen sinful creatures, but as part of God's good creation, people made in God's image. Knowing how Mema thought of us gave us hope and confidence to live into our potential, for nothing "is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord," (Romans 8:39), and nothing could separate us from the love of God in Mema.

I spent more one-on-one time with Mema once she moved to Knoxville, going to visit her twice a week during my senior year of high school and making sure to stop by during visits home from college. I watched that devil Alzheimer's slowly take away the memories of her home in Watertown, memories of Thanksgivings and Christmases together, memories of raising her children, memories of her own childhood. I experienced that sadness and I watched the power of this disease try the faith of my mother and her sisters.

But it could not take away her faith and the love she had for her family. She continued to sing her faith when we could gather around the piano together, proclaiming loudly the salvation of Jesus through the hymns that had shaped her. She could state the Apostles' Creed and pray the Lord's Prayer with a conviction that would have impressed John Calvin. She tried to take care of the other people in her building, putting their welfare above hers.

And she was prepared to meet death. She knew that we would continue in the faith she instilled in us through her "doing" and through her love. She knew that God has won the victory in Christ's death on the cross and his resurrection, and she lived daily with that knowledge and worked to carry out God's mission in her world. And she knew that her greatest joy would come in the embrace offered by Christ in his eternal victory. And she rests now in a place where there is only joy, where God reigns and no earthly disease can ever claim victory. To God be the glory.

From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
and singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!