Eucharistic meditation

Matthew 7:11: If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him.

We have been looking this morning at how our prayers fit into God’s sovereign government of all things. But underlying that question is the more basic question about God. What kind of God do we pray to? Is God a distant tyrant, running the universe for His own perverse pleasure and unresponsive to our pleas? Or is He a limited God who doesn’t have complete control over His universe?

Neither of these is a very happy situation, and neither of these is much of an encouragement to pray. If God is too distant and uncaring to hear, why pray? And if we aren’t sure He’s capable of doing anything, why pray?

The Bible, of course, teaches neither of these. God governs all things, but He is not a distant tyrant, He is not Allah. He is a heavenly Father, who listens to our prayers and really does respond to them, even to the point of “changing His mind.” He controls all things, but He does so for our good. He is sovereign, but He is sovereignly, infinitely good, infinitely kind, infinitely merciful.

This table is a weekly reassurance that this is the God we worship. At this table, the Father offers Himself to us through His Son and Spirit, the Lord shows Himself to be a good heavenly Father who feeds His children. At this table, He shows what He is willing to do for us – He saves us from Satan, sin and death, even at the cost of giving His only-begotten, well-beloved Son.

If we believe what God does and says to us at this table, we should not spend the coming week in gloom, depression, self-pity, or – most of all – fear. If God is on our side, and He is, we have nothing to fear. Instead, having been at His table, we should spend the coming week in hope, joy, confidence; we should spend the coming week in grateful obedience to the Lord; and we should spend the coming week diligently seeking the Lord, our good and gracious Father, in prayer.