a blog by Miriam Jessie Fisher

This past week been I was asked to lead communion. During the week I decided I would write a poem… As I wrote I looked at this moving piece of art by Joey Velasco.

Writing is a re-emerging creative place for me, something that is shifting in its style and subject matter and I am trying to let it shift me, not to over-analyse or hold too tight a reign on it.

I share it here.

Table of Hope

We come sometimes to the communion table, head bowed.

Ashamed.

Certain that every other saint in the room has lived a good life this week,

has spent time in prayer,

has behaved in holy ways.

We creep to the table like a starving, homeless child

Certain that we could not be welcomed

We come to the table aware of our own shortcomings,

Entirely unsure that we could have the courage to look Jesus in the eye as he says,

This is my body broken for you

This is my blood poured out for you

We are quite aware that our sin is vast

That we require rescuing

What we forget, is that the communion table beckons us to a wider table

A longer table

A table lavishly set for feasting.

This communion table is a table of Hope

An invitation

A portal into a life lived in lavish communion,

In wild feasting

With the one who made the table

Our saviour is a carpenter too –

Sometimes I think of him making chairs of every shape and size

And engraving our names,

my name

your name

on the back of one

The table we come to this morning is vast

It stretches out through space and time

Across geography

This eternal table

Invites us to a love that is impossibly wide

As is the love of God

A love we cannot measure

A love we cannot fathom

A love that directs us to a table of feasting

Where there is a chair with our name on it.

Let us come to this table reminded of the invitation extended to us all

To be loved with the

Vast

Wide

Never-ending

Love of Jesus.

Be blessed dear friends xxx