together

"At the end of the night we all lined up to receive communion and prayer from our Pastor and his wife. It took a long time to get through the line that night, but while waiting I recall looking around at the many different families who stood there ready to receive the bread and wine. As I looked at the different people gathered I was taken with the sacredness of what I was witnessing. I watched some who seemed so full; full of thanks, and life, and love because the person whose hand they held was now cancer free. But there were others who stood in line whose loved one recently died from cancer. They had no hand to hold...

That night I saw them all gathered in a line: the hungry and the full, the broken and the healed, the joyful and the mourners. There we stood, moving towards God, but also “creeping toward each other, [with] the frightened, bold agreement to be in this thing together”. “Frightened” simply because we know that we, at any point, may change places. Those who comfort may soon need to be comforted. Life is both valley and mountain. Sometimes both at once. “Feasts and fasts are bound inexorably” Adler writes. P. T. Forsyth put it like this, “The depth is simply the height inverted…”. That night at church we both gathered at the table; the hungry and the full. Is there a better place to gather? It’s there, after all, that feast and fast, joy and sorrow, kiss. We meet God at the table, but don’t we also miss him? Maranatha (“come quickly”) is a cry of hope, but isn’t it also a cry longing? Of homesickness?"

(Phil Aud, Fasting and Feasting)