In “other” Words: “Come, Lord Jesus, Be Our Guest”

“Pray­ing is no easy mat­ter. It demands a rela­tion­ship in which you allow some­one other than your­self to enter into the very cen­ter of your per­son, to see there what you would rather leave in dark­ness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched. Why would you really want to do that?”~ Henri Nouwen ~

My first response to this quote was, “Why wouldn’t you?”

When I was grow­ing up, each night before sup­per we said a prayer that had no name. We learned to recite it from the time we could talk:

Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,
Let this gift to us be blessed. Amen.

As I thought about the quote, mem­o­ries came flood­ing back to me of sit­ting around the table with my fam­ily, say­ing that prayer night after night after night … I changed, the color of the walls in the kitchen changed every few years, the table we gath­ered around was traded in for a newer model a cou­ple of times, my par­ents’ hair color changed and their faces aged … but the words never changed. Never var­ied. The grand­chil­dren learned it, too, and the tra­di­tion continues.

There is great power in those few words.

First, there is the notion that we invite Jesus to be a guest. That has always intrigued me. A guest? That requires us to issue an invi­ta­tion and an accep­tance from him.

I’ve always been taught that it works the other way around.

I also remem­ber sit­ting on a wooden pew in an old-fashioned church where I heard a very, very tall, then-middle-aged, male pas­tor with a deep boom­ing voice read these words:

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.

Rev­e­la­tion 3:20

I can still hear his voice as I type these words. Its tim­bre rings in my head to this day, although I couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. I remem­ber it dis­tinctly because I could not, as a small child, fig­ure out why God would be knock­ing on our door when he already lived in our house. After all, he joined us for sup­per every night, didn’t he? We told him good night before going to sleep and talked with him peri­od­i­cally dur­ing the day. He lived in our house so it struck me as mighty pecu­liar that a mem­ber of our fam­ily would stand out on the porch knock­ing while sup­per was get­ting cold. What nonsense!

Major trea­tises have been writ­ten on the con­cept of free will — what it really means, how it is exer­cised, the con­se­quences of one’s acts. In Sun­day School, I learned that I had the power to accept his invi­ta­tion. The fact that we were given free will speaks to our power to choose not only how we will live our lives, but also how we will spend what comes after our time on this planet has elapsed. And in whose pres­ence we will spend eternity.

So what is this “come, be our guest” busi­ness? In my mind, it con­firms that we are enter­ing into a rela­tion­ship. But it is also much more. It is a reminder that Jesus is there every minute of every day. Con­stant. Unend­ing. The alpha and omega … begin­ning and end. Good times, bad days. Sit­ting at the sup­per table right next to us. Rid­ing along in the car. Stand­ing by the water cooler while we dis­cuss what we watched on tele­vi­sion last night with our cowork­ers. In the restau­rant at lunch when we gos­sip about the coworker we didn’t ask to join us for that meal.

In the dark­ness, the still­ness, the quiet … lov­ing us in spite of all those things we don’t want revealed by the morn­ing light. Lov­ing us when we can­not speak aloud the things that shame and embarass us.

It wasn’t until that pas­tor explained dur­ing the ser­mon that some peo­ple have never said, “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest” that the pas­sage from Rev­e­la­tion began to make sense to me.

The sec­ond part of the prayer — the idea that the food being offered to the guest is a gift that we are shar­ing with him/her — is, of course, a reminder about who pro­vides every­thing we need. Not every­thing we want. But every­thing we truly need. Some­times there is great dis­par­ity between the two about which we are resent­ful, bit­ter, dis­ap­pointed and angry. But even in those times, when we take a step back from our emo­tional attach­ment to that which we can­not seem to attain, we see that we do, in fact, have pre­cisely what we need. It has been pro­vided for us.

But the prayer’s under­ly­ing mean­ing takes us beyond the lit­eral phys­i­cal feast, serv­ing as a metaphor for our very lives, our exis­tence, our promise of eter­nal life.

Finally, the gift will be blessed. I used to think that the prayer meant Lord Jesus would put a bless­ing on the food via our invi­ta­tion to him to join us. And I think that’s a rea­son­able interpretation.

But I’ve come to real­ize that the act of shar­ing a gift is a bless­ing to the recip­i­ent. So by shar­ing our very lives, we are a bless­ing to others.

This is, of course, just a brief overview of the var­i­ous ways in which that brief, sim­ple prayer can pro­vide con­text to our faith and a deeper under­stand­ing of what it means to be in a rela­tion­ship with the Sav­ior. The prayer itself — with its mul­ti­ple lay­ers of sym­bol­ism and mean­ing — is a blessing.

Because of the expe­ri­ences I have had in the years since I sat on that wooden pew star­ing up at the tall man with the big voice, I under­stand now in ways that a young child can­not that prayer is some­times an awe­some, fear­ful expe­ri­ence. This is just one exam­ple of one short prayer that can, lit­er­ally, change a life or, as in my case, sus­tain one over the course of many years, many chal­lenges, many losses, many “moun­tain­top” experiences.

Even with the con­stant pres­ence in my life of that brief prayer, all the mem­o­ries attached to it and the power it sums up, there are still times when to open my mouth and pray it — or any prayer — aloud seems daunt­ing, over­whelm­ing and point­less. There are days when life seems to “close in” and in those moments of des­per­ate, self-doubting soli­tude it would be easy to say, “For­get it! What’s the point?” or “Go away. Nobody needs to see or know these things about me. Turn the light off. Leave me alone.” At those times, I remind myself that I am utterly trans­par­ent any­way. There is nowhere to hide.

And my par­ents taught me to always strive to be a gra­cious host. It would indeed be rude and thought­less to leave a mem­ber of the fam­ily stand­ing on the porch knock­ing on the door when sup­per is on the table and the ban­quet is get­ting cold, wouldn’t it?

So it at those times when I most need to say, “Come, Lord Jesus, be my guest. Sit down here with me awhile and lis­ten to what’s hap­pen­ing in my life, what’s in my heart Shine a light into the very cen­ter of my being, touch my soul with your truth. Remind me again in whose image I was cre­ated, what my life means, what I was called to do here. Tell me again that you aren’t going to ‘cut and run,’ leave me utterly alone, make me feel worse about myself than I already do or con­demn me for my human­ity. Help me to remem­ber that you pro­vide every­thing I need — you always have and always will.”

I always feel bet­ter afterward.

So when the author asks, “Why would you really want to do that?” my response remains, “Why wouldn’t you?”

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