Streams of Mercy

Yesterday was World Communion Day, and Christians around the world gathered to break bread and share the cup in celebration of our oneness in Jesus Christ.

The observance began in a small Presbyterian church in Pennsylvania in 1933. It was the worst year of the great depression; storms swept across the mid-west dustbowl; Hitler was rising to power; Japan and Germany withdrew from the League of Nations; all provoking fear and anxiety.

Wanting to do something real and symbolic to witness to God’s faithfulness in such a time, World Communion Day was planned, and has been celebrated the first Sunday in October ever since.

In many ways, we find ourselves facing such days once again. While the circumstances are not exactly the same, and the players in the drama are different, the events of the days in which we are living all provoke fear and uncertainty. There are times when we feel lost in the midst of life, separated from the “best of times” and left to wander in what feels like the “worst of times.”

In the breaking of bread and sharing of the cup on World Communion Day, we recalled how God loved us so much that he came among us and became one with us, suffered and died for us, so that sin and death no longer have the final word. As he shared in our death, so we will share in his resurrection. God has made us his family, a family that stretches around the world; a family that is called to love as we have been loved; to forgive as we have been forgiven; to give to others what has been given to us.

As we shared our family meal, we gave thanks to God that we are not alone - that we have both each other and the Spirit of Christ among us, and the faithful love of God with us, a love that will never let us go.

Jan Richardson’s Blessing for World Communion Day says it all:

And the table will be wide

And the welcome will be wide

And the arms will open wide to gather us in.

And our hearts will open wide to receive.

And we will come as children who trust there is enough.

And we will taste and know delight.

And we will become bread

For a hungering world.

And we will become drink

for those who thirst.

And the blessed Will become the blessing.

And everywhere

Will be the feast.

Giving thanks for the beautify of World Communion Day, and for those streams of mercy, carrying us through this life to the life that is to come.

Elizabeth