Scripture Reference: Hebrews 11 - 12:2
Yesterday I preached for All Saints’ Day, and I’ve been carrying the weight of it with me ever since.
Not the weight of sadness, exactly — though there was sadness in the sanctuary, the kind that comes when you speak the names of people you loved and will not see again in this life.
It was another kind of weight. The holy weight of continuity. The feeling that comes when one story draws to a close and another begins, like that moment in a relay race when one runner’s hand releases and another’s closes around the baton.
The sacred trust of it. The responsibility and the gift, both at once.
Faith, I think, is always a handoff. It is a story that keeps moving through time, and I’ve been thinking about what it means to carry something forward.
The book of Hebrews is one of the unsolved mysteries of scripture. We don’t know who wrote it. We don’t know exactly when, or to whom, or from where. It is like this ancient letter sent to us with no return address, no signature, just this urgent, beautiful word of encouragement sent to people who desperately needed to hear it.
People whose heads were drooping. Whose knees were weak. Who had been running the race of faith for so long that they were beginning to wonder if it was all worth it. So the writer gives a word of encouragement in the form of stories. He reminds them of the ones who came before.
Abel to Enoch to Noah to Abraham to Moses to the prophets—an unbroken chain of faithfulness stretching across the centuries. Each one running toward God’s promises. Each one trusting that what they were building mattered, that their lives of faith were part of something larger, something eternal.
Generation after generation the faithful ran their leg of the race, kept their eyes on God’s promises, lived their lives as acts of trust, and then they handed the baton to the next generation.
After writer goes through this litany of saints, he says to the reader, now it’s your turn.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)
The roll call of faith stretches across centuries, but it also winds through our own stories, through the people who made faith visible in the most ordinary ways. The cloud of witnesses isn’t just ancient; it’s intimate. It’s the faces we remember, the hands that steadied us, the voices that whispered hope when we needed it most.
Here’s what I’ve been sitting with: The people we remember, the ones whose absence still aches, whose presence still shapes us, they weren’t saints because they were perfect. They were saints because they showed up. Because they loved when it was hard. Because they believed when it would have been easier not to.
Your grandmother who prayed for you every single day.
Your friend who showed up with soup when you were sick.
The neighbor who shoveled your walk without being asked.
The teacher who saw something in you that you couldn’t yet see in yourself.
The person who loved you through your worst season and didn’t give up.
They were saints in their kitchens and cubicles, in carpool lines and hospital rooms, in the quiet, ordinary moments when no one was watching. They ran with endurance. They kept their eyes on Jesus.
Then, they handed you the baton.
Who are the saints who shaped your faith?
And here’s the part that takes my breath away: We are the saints of today.
Not someday. Not after we’ve done enough or been enough or fixed enough of our brokenness. Right now. In our kitchens and classrooms, in our workplaces and neighborhoods. In the ordinary, faithful work of showing up, loving people, praying, serving, forgiving, trying again. We are the saints of today.
In a world as weary and divided as ours, maybe holiness looks like persistence in love. Maybe sainthood means refusing cynicism. Choosing compassion over contempt. Lifting one another up when the race feels long.
This is not about achieving some impossible standard of holiness. This is about receiving what’s been handed to us and carrying it forward. It’s about becoming, in our own lives, the kind of people whose love leaves a mark. Whose faithfulness becomes a foundation. Whose ordinary acts of kindness become someone else’s memory of grace.
One day, maybe decades from now, maybe a century, someone will remember us. They will tell stories about what we did, who we loved, how we showed up. They will give thanks for the faith they saw in us.
What will they say?
Will they say we ran with perseverance? That we kept our eyes on Jesus? That we laid aside the weights that held us back and ran the race set before us?
Will they say we were people who saw those in need and helped? Who fed the hungry and visited the lonely, who gave generously of our time and resources for our neighbors?
Will they say we were people who wrestled with hard questions, who made difficult decisions—not because it was easy, but because we trusted God’s promises?
The race is ours.
What story are you writing with your life? What legacy will your love leave behind?
The baton is in your hands.
The world doesn’t need more perfect people. It needs steady ones—kind ones. The kind of saints who will stand in the rubble and rebuild. Who will hold the light when the headlines dim it. Who will keep believing that love is still worth the risk. Because that is what holiness looks like now: not an escape from the world’s pain, but a faithful presence within it.
May we remember that sainthood was never about perfection, but about participation— the courage to keep showing up in love. May the hands that once steadied us teach our own hands to open, to bless, to build. And as we take our place in the story, may we run our race with grace — becoming, one ordinary act at a time, someone else’s memory of God’s goodness.