We Place Upon Your Table, Lord (Evangelical Lutheran Worship 467)
1 We place upon your table, Lord,
where you by grace have bid us dine,
these tokens of our daily work,
the food of life, the bread and wine.
2 Within these simple things there lie
the height and depth of human life:
our pain and tears, our thoughts and toils,
our hopes and fears, our joy and strife.
3 Accept them, Lord; they come from you;
we take them humbly from your hand;
put these your gifts to higher use:
the holy meal that you command.
Text: M.F.C. Wilson; Music: W. Walker, Southern Harmony; Public Domain
Devotion
How many time zones are there in the continental United States? Four. So in one country, there are four times at the same time—Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. How many time zones in Holy Communion? Four. There is the ancient past (“In the night he was betrayed…”). There is the even more distant ancient past (the Last Supper recalls the night of the first Passover). There is the present moment, when I meet Jesus, person to person, heart to heart and hear “This is my body, my blood, for your forgiveness). And there is the future, for this meal is the “foretaste of the feast to come.” On this World Communion Sunday, I give thanks for those who have been, for those who are, and for those who will be living definitions of what faith in Christ looks like.
Prayer
Holy God, within the gifts we place upon your table are the pain and tears, the thoughts and toils, the hopes and fears, the joy and strife that are the ingredients that have shaped our faith in you. So it is in faith that, in thankfulness for these gifts of bread and wine, we offer ourselves, and our faith, as signs of our thanks for life in Christ. In Jesus’ name. Amen.