Communion Meditation – Bread of Earth & Bread of Heaven(2).png

A Twilight Musing

When we commune with God through His Son in the Lord’s Supper, we do well to ask ourselves whether we are really hungry for the food offered there. While our physical bodies need earthly food, for those who have been re-created in Christ another dimension of life has been added. Jesus’ promise of satisfaction to those who hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matt. 5) is surely partly applicable to the Lord’s Supper, where the communicants partake of heavenly food that sustains their souls.

We acknowledge our inability to feed ourselves spiritually every time we partake of the Lord’s Supper together, and we admit that we are all needy creatures, not worthy even to have the crumbs from God’s table. But that attitude puts us in the right frame of mind to realize how privileged we are to be invited to sup together with Jesus.

The fare God offers here goes beyond even the miraculous manna in the wilderness and water pouring out of a rock. The new person in Christ must be fed by the Holy Spirit, who will produce in him or her the proper characteristics of the healthy new life: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). If these qualities are manifested in our lives, we know that we have truly communed together at the Lord’s table.

Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.

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