By John MacDuff
O Lord, I beseech You to draw near to me this day in Your great mercy. I have the near prospect of approaching You at Your gracious Sacramental Ordinance. As You are preparing for me a table in the wilderness, do prepare me for the table. O send forth Your light and Your truth, let them lead me--let them bring me unto Your holy hill and unto Your tabernacles. Then will I go unto the Altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy. May it be my experience within the gates of the Sanctuary, and while partaking of the Sacred Feast--"This is none other than the House of God, this is the Gate of heaven,"--"I have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."
Fill me with a humbling sense of my own demerits and shortcomings. I am not worthy to eat of the crumbs which fall from the Master's Table; how much less to be seated at the banqueting Table itself, and to enjoy the blessedness of near and endearing fellowship with You. Come, Lord, and search me--Come and try me--Come and see if there be any wicked way in me; and lead me in the way everlasting. Impart, above all, an inspiring and elevating sense of Your great and infinite love to me in Christ Jesus. At this, His own commemorative Ordinance, may I have a realizing apprehension of all that mystery of agony and suffering He so willingly endured for me. May the near sight of Gethsemane and Calvary give me deeper and intenser views of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, as that which filled His cup of anguish. May I be enabled, as I go afresh to this covenanting ground--not only to confess my sins, but to have the hearty desire and resolution to forsake them; and to live, in the time to come, not unto myself--but unto Him who loved me and gave Himself for me, that He might redeem me from all iniquity, and purify me unto Himself, as one of His own peculiar people, zealous of good works.
My earnest prayer is, to be brought more constantly and habitually under the constraining influence of redeeming love--that the life You have preserved by Your mercy, and which You have ransomed at such a price, may be henceforth consecrated to Your praise. May the blessed Feast prove a hallowed means of strengthening within me every Christian grace, and of confirming every good resolution. May this be my earnest aspiration, 'Lord, evermore give me this Bread.' Like Your servant of old, in the strength of that food, may I go on, from day to day, until I reach the true mount of God above.
Bestow Your blessing on all my fellow-communicants. There is bread enough in our Father's house and to spare. May those who through sickness and other restraints of Your providence, are unable to go to the Courts of Your Sanctuary, know that You are not confined to temples or to tables made with hands--that wherever there is a true worshiper, there, there is a prayer-hearing--a prayer-answering--a covenant-keeping God. May those who tarry at home divide the spoil.
Bless Your ministering servants who are to be this day the dispensers of the Holy rite. As they deal the Bread of Life to others, may their own souls be abundantly satisfied. Let Your priests be clothed with righteousness, and let Your saints shout for joy. The Lord bless the House of Israel--the Lord bless the House of Aaron--both small and great that fear the Lord, do You surely bless them. So may this appointed Ordinance prove, to each and all of us, a season of reviving and refreshing from Your own immediate presence.
And all I ask, or hope for, is in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ, my only Lord and Savior. Amen.
