This is a eucharistic table, a table of thanksgiving. And thanksgiving always implies giving. Your thanks is in response to His giving. Your thanks is not in response to your obedient gratitude in the raw. Any youth can be told to be grateful only to roll his eyes at the exhortation. He may well know that he is to be grateful but he certainly isn’t and can’t seem to conjure up that sublimity of gratitude which is required of him. He is right in part. He cannot work up his own thanksgiving and nevertheless the duty is before him.

Learn from this that gratitude always comes as a gift of faith. And faith apprehends the stunning promise of God. Take this bread it is the body of Christ broken for you. Take this wine. It is His blood poured out. If He has given this for you, what will He not give? Whether Paul, or Apolos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours. So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.