filled

My hands lay open in my lap, palms turned up to receive whatever grace God loves to give, somewhere that should feel like home. I bend my head to rest, empty of expectation.

This Sunday, round tables replace the rows. Today, we actually worship together; we actually commune. It feels like wandering into a sprawling reunion, like watching the weaving jumble finally order at table for the family meal. The orientation of my chair, turned completely opposite the usual way, has me looking into the room. I wonder if I have energy for all this facing each other. I almost wore my ripped-up jeans today, because they tell the truth. The holes give way to my real skin and bone; they give way, finally, to my glory-wrapped heart.

I glance at the center of the table. The elements–that abundant platter of torn bread, draped shroud-like with a white cloth napkin; the corked bottle of bruised red juice–tell the story of the broken given, of Love that not only submitted to the breaking but gave the crushed, spilled, shattered bits of Himself away. It happened just as God planned from the beginning, just as He said it would, just as He wants again in me.

So, I look around, forcing myself to see, and I smile into eyes across the room. In my own way, I try to give the broken bits of myself away. I try not to hide, though desperately I want to. It’s why we come here, after all, to Love.

But now, we pray, so I open my hands, letting my fingers loose their grip on life, on me. I yield, finding no requests of my own to articulate. It’s not that I’m at a loss for words, just that I feel unspecifically needy. Today, I feel like I’ve been scrubbed clean and dried. It makes sense to me how the crisp, yeast-less crusts beneath the cloth could represent a body broken. Sometimes brokenness flows, like the blood-rich juice. Sometimes, it crumbles.

Lord...

I open slowly, like a bud: first the fingers, then the hands, then the posture, the core, the heart.

My friend–she sat down hastily beside just moments ago, she reaches over and places her hand into one of my open ones, the gesture deliberate and careful. I realize then what I hadn’t before, how silently purposeful she’s loved me, how intentionally she joined my table, how stubbornly she made her husband move over so that she could sit beside. Knowing the painful counting of my blessing, my friend walked in that room and decided to be with me, and with her own body now, she tells the Truth. I ask God for what-I-don’t-know, and He fills my empty hand with hers. He places her shoulder next to mine, her voice close enough to catch my ear. As I have loved you, so you must love one another (John 13:34). Without a word, my dear friend gives away the broken bits of herself, puts them right in my open palm. And I think of another unlikely feast, of the miracle that with so broken little, all those hungry people were full (John 6:12). It happened like this maybe, one empty hand filled after another.

Suddenly, I lift my other hand, the only one now still looking empty, and I use it to cover my friend’s hand, the one she surrendered to cover me, thinking how Love covers over, how just like that our yielded hands become a shelter.