“Table Blessing”

To your table you bid us come. You have set the places, you have poured the wine, and there is always room, you say, for one more.

And so we come. From the streets and from the alleys we come.

From the deserts and from the hills we come.

From the ravages of poverty and from the palaces of privilege we come.

Running, limping, carried, we come.

We are bloodied with our wars, we are wearied with our wounds, we carry our dead within us, and we reckon with their ghosts.

We hold the seeds of healing, we dream of a new creation, we know the things that make for peace, and we struggle to give them wings.

And yet, to your table we come. Hungering for your bread, we come; thirsting for your wine, we come; singing your song in every language, speaking your name in every tongue, in conflict and in communion, in discord and in desire, we come, O God of Wisdom, we come

© Jan L. Richardson from In Wisdom’s Path: Discovering the Sacred in Every Season.