image via pxhere CC0
O God, your feast is prepared by hands like these.
Through your goodness we have this bread to offer
through your goodness we have our hands to offer
and our homes, our hearts, our hospitality.
You take our hands,
skilled or clumsy, strong or aching,
smooth-skinned or knobbly or tough.
And you teach us with them
to touch with respect
the hands we can reach
the hands we can’t reach
invisible hands
that work for their lives
that work for our lives.
You take our homes,
everyday places
of freedom and selfishness,
of beauty and chaos and love,
and ask us to open them
not just to our friends,
our family and relations,
the neighbors we have to live with
or the people we want to impress,
but to those we don’t know
and can’t quite imagine –
to open our homes
and fill them with laughter
as your house is full.
You take our lives,
ordinary as wheat or cornmeal,
daily as bread,
our stumbling generosity,
our simple actions,
and you find them good enough,
to open the door to your kingdom.
Janet Morley, English writer, worship leader, and author of
___________________
Then he turned to his host.
“When you put on a luncheon or a banquet,” he said,
“don’t invite your friends, brothers, relatives, and rich neighbors.
For they will invite you back, and that will be your only reward.
Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
Then at the resurrection of the righteous,
God will reward you for inviting those who could not repay you.”
prayer & verse 