All saints (every) day

Colossians 1:
Thanksgiving and Prayer

3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints—

Firstly, I’m challenged by Paul’s statement “we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ when we pray for you…” Think about the impact of our relationships with each other, our place of work, and the people we serve, if we ‘always thank God….when we pray for you’. God does a work in our hearts and minds when pray this way.

Every day here at the Corporate office our team gathers to pray for our programs across Ontario and around the world. What is always moving is when we hear the stories of how you as teams through significant investment of time, patience and compassion and as a result of the faithful years, a person supported is able for the first time to go into the community, or participate in a vacation, or make contact with their family or…(the list goes on and on). We enjoy and rejoice in the opportunity to hear of ‘your faith in Christ and the love that you have for all the saints’.

The word saint is an interesting one. Paul refers to all those who are children of God as saints. Now, think about that for a bit. The people whom you work with, the people whom you serve, dare I say, the people you work for J are ‘saints’ – that means you too. That’s pretty heady stuff – but don’t let it inflate your ego too much. You might need to straighten and shine your halo. We are all saints, not by our own will or worthiness, but by the call and purpose of God. How should that affect how we treat each other, how we serve, how we view and ‘handle’ each other? We are caring for saints of God, because He has declared it.

‘The love that you have for ALL the saints’ It seems God doesn’t give us much room to pick and chose eh? It would be so much easier if we could say “I’ll love that saint, and that one, I think is more the opposite of a saint”. Again, we are saints, but not because of our will, earning or worthiness, but by God’s delight and pleasure – whomever God has declared a saint is worthy of love, respect and peace. Now not everyone in the world is declared by God to be a saint – only those who are seeking to yield their will to Him.

Consider all those that you serve and work with as ‘saints’ called by God. Think about how God would have us interact, relate and treat His saints.

Anyway I was just thinking…..

Neil