Today being All Hallows Eve, tomorrow must be all hallows, or all saints’ day.  The church will be celebrating the lives of the saints: Christians who have lived and died before us.

Here’s a performance poem that I wrote quite a while ago for a primary school assembly on all saints’ day.  It was performed with props and bits of costume which had to be put on, picked up and thrown down again at high speed, adding to the silliness – but, hopefully, it makes a memorable point by the end.

St Peter was a fisherman, he fished the whole day long,
When Jesus asked him questions, Peter got the answers wrong,
When they said he followed Jesus, Peter swore it wasn’t true!
If St Peter is a saint, then we can be saints too!

St Paul was an unpleasant man with just one thing in mind:
To hunt down and to murder all the Christians he could find.
Yet he’s the one that Jesus chose to send his message through,
If St Paul can be a saint, then we can be saints too!

Saint Matthew was a taxman who stole far more than his share
Everybody hated him and said he was unfair
But Jesus said “Hey, follow me”: Matt stuck to him like glue
If St Matthew is a saint, then we can be saints too!

St Martha was a fusspot, and when Jesus came to stay
She wouldn’t sit and listen to a thing he had to say,
She squabbled with her sister as she tried to cook the stew –
If St Martha is a saint, then we can be saints too!

None of us is perfect, we don’t always get things right.
We lie and steal and misbehave, we argue and we fight.
But Jesus says, “Just come with me, and I can make you new,
I did it for these saints you’ve seen – I’ll do it for you too!”