As we come to this Table week after week, we are approaching the Lord Jesus. We are partaking of Him, and being knit together with one another in love. But sometimes, it might not feel that way to us. Sometimes we are tempted to be discouraged because we don’t sense the progress strongly enough.
But as one wise old Puritan taught, God’s answers to our prayers are both visible and invisible. Our prayers rise to Him, as water vapor rises from the earth. Sometimes our prayers return to us as in a thundershower, and you can hear it pounding on the roof. But other times God returns our prayers to us in the dew, which we cannot hear at all, and which we discover later.
As we gather together, we consistently pray that the Lord would protect us, and that He would use us in this state of protection to be able to offer the way of life to those who are still under His judgments. In effect, we are praying the sentiment of Zephaniah 2:3—“Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be that ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.”
The answer to this prayer may be dramatic and visible, like the Hebrew children protected in the land of Goshen, or like Noah in the ark, or it may be quiet and mysterious, like the working of providence that delivered Mordecai from Haman. So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.