This first dark evening, EA and I drove back to church for All Saints Choral Evensong. St. B’s had been hyping this service for some time. And by hyping, I mean Episcopalian hyping which is basically just letting us know that it was going to be a beautiful and meaningful service. It was indeed both of those things.

I don’t want to be reductive but All Saints Day is a day of heartache and hope. We remember those who have gone before us. Many churches remember those who had passed on in the previous year. It is also a day where we look forward to the time when everything will be made right and we all will be saints in the presence of God.

Within this gorgeous service of music, meditation, and readings of scripture, we took part in a liturgy that I had never experienced before. Everyone was invited to come to the altar rail to light a candle in remembrance of the departed. Then all along the front were chimes of different notes. Each person was invited to ring a chime in remembrance of someone who was no longer here with us. Each ring was for another person. Some would kneel at the front and ring their chime three or four or five times.

I can only describe for you what it was like for 10 or 15 minutes to hear all of these notes ringing out. As they echoed through the sanctuary, you realize that each note is representative of a life. Not just of a life, but also love that perseveres despite time and distance and a stubborn hope that death is not the end of all this. It was good and holy and also heartbreaking. Yet it is the kind of cathartic heartbreak that we need but all too rarely allow in our lives.

Since early September, our youngest son and I have been doing weekly “Dinner, Discipleship, & Dad” meetings or “D&D&D” for short (last week, we added another “D” when we had deep dish pizza). Liam is wanting to take the next step in his faith by getting baptized. At our old church he would have been getting ready for a confirmation class of sorts. Though we are attending another church, he doesn’t really feel comfortable there yet. So we’re pressing forward with our one on one confirmation class, which sometimes feels like I am going rogue yet I take some solace in that I am ordained and seminary-trained.

It’s one of my favorite times of the week. Part of it comes from the fact that any time you get to have one-on-one time with your kid, it’s special. We have dinner. We talk a little about school and then we talk about forgiveness or the life of Jesus. We pray. Nerd and former youth minister that I am, I make up colorful worksheets about whatever we are talking about that night.

As awesome as it is, I feel a certain weight to talking with my kid about faith. On one hand, I know that God is bigger than whatever shortcomings that I have. On the other hand, I want to give him a good foundation with which he can grow.

This verse is where I started. Truth be told, it was the version in Mark because I like how the “Hear O Israel” part connects to the Shema in Deuteronomy. But it was the Greatest Commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Is it obvious? Yes, but we are not trying to be clever or cunning here. In fact, one of the things I love about the Greatest Commandment in Matthew is Jesus’ assertion that all of the Law and the prophets hang out these two things.

Today has been a good day in spite of also being a very heavy day, which means there is not much in the tank for Ye Olde Weekly Lectionary. So I simply have two thoughts that Rev. Sides shared this morning and the inevitable weird pop cultural direction my mind immediately went with one of those thoughts.

The passage today is about the people quarreling with Moses because there wasn’t water after last week the people quarreled with Moses because there wasn’t enough food. And this is kind of the carousel of regress that keeps the people wandering in the wilderness for forty years. It is very easy for us—centuries later and very comfortably removed from the narrative—to shake our heads. But that’s not exactly fair.

Rev. Sides shared an insight from a seminary professor that God will let people wander in the desert for forty years just so they can get their heads on straight. The sermon looked at this story from a perspective that I had not really thought about before: the fact that some of God’s best work takes time. Experiencing freedom and grace takes time. Growing into who God wants us to be takes time.

When people ask me how I’m doing, I don’t really know what to say. Or at least, I don’t know what to say if I’m being honest. I am not good or fine, but I am certainly not doing poorly either. I wonder if this is a limit of the English language. Other languages like German seem to have these words for the really specific situations that we find ourselves in. For example, waldeinsamkiet is a word for the peace and spiritual stillness that one feels by walking through the woods. I love that. English doesn’t seem to have those kind of words.

I want a succinct way to say, “I am surviving and doing as well as I can in what has been a very challenging season.” It’d be great if there was a word for that. Because when you cue up that mouthful I just wrote out, people aren’t going to ask you how you’re doing again. But that place (whatever you call it) is where I am, where I’ve been, and maybe where I’ll be for awhile.

With that in mind, my ears pricked up during the first reading in church this morning. The Israelites have made it out of Egypt, which is great. Yet they are also now in the wilderness and it is definitely a challenging season. They don’t know how long they’re going to be out there. As most of us are wont to do, the people start complaining. “It would have been better if we had just died in Egypt.” Over dramatic? Yes, but I think we’ve all found ourselves there at some point.

When I was a more literally-minded child/youth, I was terrified of the 77 threshold. Because we were reminded regularly that all of us sin every single day and there are 365 days in a year then surely the math would eventually catch up with me. I am going to screw up in at least one particular way seventy-eight times. Then what? Is that it? Grace is going to run out. I got a little reprieve when the footnotes told me that Jesus could have said “70 times 7 times” which would get us to the number 490. BUT WHAT IF WE LIVE LONG ENOUGH THAT WE HIT 491 FOR SOME SIN? How could God ever forgive us of something like that?!

(I have come to realize that my overactive imagination made me a very anxious child.)

Jesus was not giving a number to loom over our heads. He was not warning us about some sort of expiration date for God’s mercy. He was kicking down the door into a world of grace that we could not even imagine. That becomes more clear when you find out that the unmerciful servant in the parable that Jesus tells was forgiven a debt that was worth 20 years worth of wages.

The numbers are not the point. It’s like when we tell kids that we love them 3000, to the moon and back, or times infinity. Quantifying it does not do any justice. I know that “Amazing Grace” is the one hymn that everybody knows, but when you really sit back and think about grace, it truly is something staggering. And I forget that sometimes having been in church my entire life. Yet God’s grace and love for us is unfathomably amazing.