URC Daily Devotion 29 July 2026

Reflection
Whenever we gather at the Lord’s Table we hear these words of Paul, either as a warrant for what we do in the Words of the Institution, or woven into the great prayer of thanksgiving. What we do is anchored in what Christ did at the Last Supper, and that reminds us that every Sunday since Pentecost Christians have gathered to break bread and share wine, voices raised in thanksgiving.

As they have given thanks and taken the bread and wine which Christ said was his body and his blood, they have experienced a particular closeness to the Lord, his very presence. Across the church catholic that has been expressed in many different ways. Yet all are clear that God took the ordinary things of life – bread and wine – and made them extraordinary. For the Reformed preaching and Holy Communion are ‘trysting places’ where God in Christ meets with his people.

In a sense that experience of communion is a paradigm for understanding the relationship between God and the world. God is, of course, totally other from the world and not to be confused with it. That means that there is no sacred space where God is – that was why Calvin wanted the doors of the cathedral in Geneva to be locked outside service hours. It was rather that all space is sacred. For those who look at the world through the ‘spectacles’ of Scripture and the gospel, it is pregnant with the glory of God, crackling with God’s rationality and providential love. In laboratories and libraries, in schools and in hospitals, in shops and in factories, God is there, making the ordinary extraordinary. That is why we bring the ordinary things of the world, bread, wine and gifts of money to the table of the Lord in Holy Communion.

Prayer
Lord God
You are greater than we can imagine.
Our minds cannot comprehend your glory.
You juggle with black holes and white dwarves.
Matter and anti-matter are tools in your hands,
shaping a universe that defies our finest science.
Yet you come to us in words, and bread and wine,
and you surround us with your love.
Open our eyes that we may see and welcome you,
In Jesus’ name. Amen.