The Table

Dinner is served. Throughout history, this singular announcement has ushered friends, family, and sometimes foes to a place of shared sustenance, conversation, and debate. For me, the gathering at table has almost always been a time of discovery and joy. When I was a girl, we often had missionaries from far off and exotic places receiving my parents’ hospitality, and mealtimes offered a fascinating variety of stories and conversations.

Being a child of vivid imagination, I would close my eyes and picture places where people walked worn paths alongside their animals, carried jugs of water on their heads, and spoke to one another in beautiful musical tones a language I could not understand intellectually but could feel with my heart.

To this day, nothing is quite so enticing to me as a table laden with steaming dishes and apparently eager for all who are near to sit and cozy up to it and to each other. There really is an intimacy in the breaking of bread together. Smiling across at each other as we pass the food around and lifting our glasses in acknowledgement of this precious moment that we have together.

I wonder what it was like for the disciples as they shared their meals with Jesus and talked about all they had experienced together and their plans for the next day. There must have been so many of those times before they came to the last one. Even after all that time together, and all the things He said to them about the good news of His kingdom, they still didn’t really understand what was happening when He said “I won’t drink of this cup again until…”

I can imagine that in the years after He had gone back to be with the Father, when some of them were sitting at table together sharing bread and rehearsing the various missions they were carrying out in His name and in the power of the Holy Spirit, they might have remembered with great fondness those earlier days when Jesus, their friend and brother, had eaten together with them. And they would certainly have talked about what it would be like when He returned.

Communion is a sharing. It is both giving and receiving. When we take communion in remembrance of Him, we partake of His divine person and receive the power of His blood to cleanse us. We give Him full and total allegiance, and we acknowledge His place as King of the whole world and of heaven. We have fellowship with one another in the light of His glory and grace (1 John 1:6). This table beckons us to partake of heaven’s bread and share in His joy.

Dear friend, I trust that you take time this week to be at table with friends and family, and that you have true fellowship with them and with the Lord. Receive what He is offering you, today.

Until next week, dear one, dine at the Master’s table and enjoy the liberty that is yours in His presence.