Devotional Thoughts on the Lord's Supper, the Offering, and Prayer

This is one of my talks.
Today is November 24th. That means it is four days until Thanksgiving. It is actually a year and two days since last Thanksgiving. It doesn’t seem that long, does it? It seems more like about nine months to me. The time has really flown by. We’re all familiar with that phrase “time flies,” and the older you get the faster it seems to fly. And if the months go by swiftly, then obviously the days and the hours pass even faster. For example, it is now about 9:20 a.m., so six hours ago it was 3:20. What were you doing at that time? Almost certainly, you were fast asleep. However, if you had been up, I’m sure you would say that the six hours since then went by very quickly. If you are like me, you have probably often said that you wish there was something you could do to slow time down. Well, I could suggest a few ways that you might make those six hours seem a little bit longer than usual.
For example, you could put about 60 or 70 pounds on a barbell, lift it up over your head, and hold it there for the next six hours. Or you could take a jump rope and jump up and down with it for the next six hours. Maybe you would rather get up on a horizontal bar like a gymnast and hang there for the next six hours. Or you could get up on a cross with large nails through your hands and your feet and hang there for six hours. Or you could watch as your only son hangs on a cross for six hours. Then the time wouldn’t fly by anymore, would it? Then the minutes would seem like hours, and the hours would seem like days.
But, of course, Jesus did hang on a cross for six hours, with God the Father watching. And when we think of the pain Jesus endured, we think primarily of the physical pain. However, consider the emotional pain of being betrayed by one of his own followers, of having one of His best friends deny Him three times, and of his other friends abandoning Him, plus the spiritual pain of taking the horrible sins of billions and billions of people on himself, and therefore being separated from His Father for the first time in all eternity. These latter pains were almost certainly even worse than the physical pain. There is no question that no man or woman ever suffered like Jesus did. What is really amazing, however, is that, if it could possibly have been any worse, any more painful, any more humiliating, or any lonelier than it actually was, Jesus would still have gone through the Crucifixion for us. Of course, the natural question that arises is “Why?” Why would Jesus put himself through such suffering for people so undeserving of forgiveness as us? The answer to that question lies in a single word, a word that is common to both of the commands that Jesus gave to us in Matthew 22, two commands that Jesus said sum up all the Law and the Prophets. That single word is love. In Jesus case, perfect, unconditional agape love. God is love. And that is what we are here to celebrate this morning, the love of God and the resurrection of Jesus, our Savior. We will now partake of the bread and the fruit of the vine in memory of that amazing sacrifice. As we do so, let us examine ourselves to see if we can honestly state, as a well-known hymn says, “I Surrender All,” because Jesus certainly surrendered His all for us.