As we go now from this table

As we go now from this table

Having shared your holy meal,

May our lives be made your witness,

Showing your good news is real. 

As we go out, still we carry

Sacrament as sign and seal.

 

We are challenged to remember,

Through the humble bread we broke,

All your deeds and all your living,

All the sacred words you spoke.

May your call be marked upon us

Like a painter's strong brush stroke.

 

Also marked upon your memory

Is the cup we poured and shared. 

All your sorrows and your sufferings,

All the ways in which you cared;

Let the cup help us remember, 

Let us not be unprepared.

 

As we sing this song of parting

Like you sang with all your friends,

May we know there will be one day

Your new song that never ends.

Till that day may our song witness

To your love that heals and mends.

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, August 2024.

MUSIC: Tune TRINITY, Peter Cutts, 1983. Copyright 1983 Hope Publishing Company.

 

 

In thinking about the sacrament and the songs that go with it, it struck me that most of them seem made to come before the meal, and then a few that proceed all the way through it; I couldn't think of many that followed after the sacrament as a kind of parting hymn of the table. It seemed like a hymn that reminds us of what we take with us from the sacrament could be useful. And yes, with World Communion Sunday not too far off, the sacrament was on my mind perhaps a little extra.

On a separate note, as much as I try to avoid using hymn tunes under copyright, I think this is the third or fourth hymn text of mine that has attached itself to this tune, which I have not even had opportunity to sing in worship very often. Honestly, my right hand does not know what my left hand is doing...