Rev. Dr. Courtney Allen Crump, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia begins with the story of a man who visited a monastery in hopes of learning how to live a more holy life. When he asked “a particularly saintly looking soul” what the “holy people who live there” do all day, here’s the response he received. “What do we do all day? We fall down and get up. We fall down and get up. We fall down and get up.” Crump says, “And isn’t that what the saints we know have done? And isn’t that what most of us do each day of our lives?” In today’s passage from Luke 6:20-31, Jesus preaches his famous “Sermon on the Plain.” Jesus “comes to a level place to say something to people who feel like they are nothing and to warn people who believe they are something on their own, apart from God.” On All Saints’ Day, Crump challenges us to shift our view of a saint. A saint is not “a person who never fails, but a person who gets back up after falling down and keeps at God’s work in the world.” How will you be a saint this week?
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