The Table She Set Every Sunday

For thirty-one years, Maria Gonzalez set an extra place at her kitchen table in San Antonio. Every Sunday after church, she cooked enough rice, beans, and carne guisada for whoever might walk through her door — a college student far from home, a newly divorced father, a refugee family from Guatemala who spoke no English. The plate was always there, the chair always pulled out, before any guest arrived.

Her granddaughter once asked why she bothered when sometimes nobody came. Maria wiped her hands on her apron and said, "You prepare the table because the invitation is the point. The meal says what words cannot — you belong here."

When Jesus sent His disciples ahead to prepare that upper room, He was doing something Maria understood instinctively. The bread was broken before they fully grasped what it meant. The cup was poured before they understood the cost. He prepared a place and set a table for people who would abandon Him before morning.

That is the staggering heart of communion. The Lord of heaven does not wait until we are worthy, faithful, or even fully awake to what He is doing. He prepares the room. He breaks the bread. He offers the cup and says, "This is My blood of the covenant, poured out for many."

Every time we gather at that table, we are the guests who arrived to find a place already set — by a Host who loved us long before we showed up.