The forest for the trees

 There's a fun expression out there that says that you can't see the forest for the trees.  The big gag being, of course, that the forest is made of trees.  That is, you can't have a forest without trees, so if you see a large number of trees all together, there's a good chance that you're looking at a forest without intending to.

But what the expression means is that you're missing the big picture.  That is, you're looking at  something and missing the big picture for the details.  And that's easy to do, to be sure, to obsess over the details, the small picture, and miss the big picture of what is going on, and what to do.  But in the reading that we had on All Saints' Day, it ends up being the opposite.  That is, we miss the details because we only see the big picture.

We are people who are, right now, every day, looking at a big picture, and missing the details.  In my days now, what tends to happen is that I look at the numbers of cases, the numbers of deaths, and the number is so big that it just sort of washes over me. The details are completely lost to me as I watch the numbers tick up day by day, and see how much the line goes up by.  Say what you will about Joe Biden, but what he tried to do in his debate with Donald Trump was to humanize the Covid 19 crisis.  He spent some time talking about empty kitchen chairs, jobs left open because those who had been working at them had expired, and empty beds because the people who slept in them have now died.  This was a great humanizing moment, because we are tempted to miss the details in terms of the big picture.  That red number on worldometers, the number representing deaths, it just sort of goes up over time, and it's easy to forget that that number is made up of individual people who lived, felt dawn, saw sunset's glow.  Loved and were loved, and now lie dead.

We're coming up on Remembrance day, and that's the other humanizing day for the dear dead.  We remember the people who gave their lives for King and Country, but also the individuals who served their country whom we know.  They may have died overseas, they may have come home. They may have returned to normal life, and they may have been so traumatized that it stayed with them for life.  Humanizing them and making their service and sacrifice real means that we are less likely to forget them.  It's easy to forget a number, but it's harder to forget a person who matters.

When you're thinking of the great crowd of witnesses that nobody can number, it's easy to miss the trees for the forest.  It's easy to see them as just a great crowd, but Jesus didn't die for a crowd, you know.  He didn't shed his blood that a country, or a tribe, or a people could be saved, but he shed his blood for individual people.  Babies who are held and baptized in the sweet waters of baptism.  Children who come to Sunday School, and confirmation.  Adults who give themselves to one another in marriage, who share life and time with their friends and their relatives, people who live lives of quiet obedience to God and his covenants, who live and die and are remembered certainly not by history, but they're remembered by us.  They matter to us.  

And they matter to God.

The entire story of the scriptures is God making a promise to Abraham, saying to him that his descendants will be more numerous than the stars of the sky and the sand on the beach, and then also finding, seeking and saving the lost.  Lines talking about how he has engraved us on the palms of his hands, about how he knew us before he formed us in the womb and set us apart.  Jesus talks about how he as come to find, seek and save the lost, about how he leaves the 99 to go and find the one.  It's a big deal, and it seems obsessed with individuals.  Because God is obsessed with individuals.  He desires all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.  All people.  All individuals.  He stands at each individual door and knocks.  

That's the good news for you today, in a world where the bad news sort of overwhelms and washes over everything.  Where you can't keep up with the news that is so big that you can't even see it anymore.  A relentless tide of sickness, bodies, a great crowd that you can't even number anymore.  But you can think of individuals.  Of people.  You may very well be thinking of those today whom you love and have lost, and to think about them in a world that has moved on and has forgotten.  But God has not forgotten.  He remembers them still, as you do.  He loves them so much that he shed his blood for them, sanctified them, made them holy. And he came that you and they may have life together forever.

He does this not because these saints of God are well thought of or famous, but because they are not.  He shed his blood for the forgotten by the world, for the unknown by history, but for those whom are vitally important to those who were affected by them, and who love them still.  There's a movie out there called 'the incredible shrinking man.'  It's a slow burn, but it's worth it.  And that movie tells the tale of, well, a shrinking man.  The effects are reasonable, and he ends up being terrorized by small household pests, and lives in a dollhouse, and so on.  But he keeps on shrinking, for the whole movie, all the way to the end.  It gets very philosophical by the end, where he shrinks down to sub-cellular levels.  And he says something wildly profound, for those of us who are thinking of those whom we have loved and lost.  To God there is no zero.  They still exist.  There are no unimportant people to him, which is the majesty of All Saints' day.  Not that we celebrate those who are well known, thought of, and remembered, but we celebrate those whom the world has forgotten, but whom God has engraved on his palms, and for whom he shed his blood.  The individual who make up the great crowd.