By The Revd Canon Gordon B. Fyfe

Rector of St Columba’s Scottish Episcopal Church, Largs

I wonder if you have ever been full of good intentions about tidying up some drawers or cupboards in your house. You may even have gone far enough as to actually act on this impulse and begin the laborious process of emptying the contents in order to sort through the various bits and pieces to be found. If so, then you, like me, may have been stopped in your tracks and all too easily distracted by discovering a collection of photographs. Once this has happened all work may be likely to stop as you pause and take time from the task in hand to leaf through the prints. It is a process that is capable of lifting you out of the present moment as you recognise places and faces from the past - of holidays and of relatives and friends from long ago. In that moment you may feel so connected to them that the thought of continuing the clearing out becomes a secondary issue.

On Wednesday of this week (1 November) the Church celebrates All Saints’ Day. It is a bit like the discovery of those old photographs in the midst of clearing out. On the feast of All Saints’ Christians take time to reflect on those, whose names are remembered or now known only to God, who have gone before us with the sign of faith; those who were close to the Lord and through whom his light shone in their own day and generation.

It is good to think on all that God achieved in the lives of so many men and women of the past and encouraging to remember that we, too, are called into that same life of love, faith and service; a life empowered by the same Holy and life-giving Spirit.