Given for You

The table in my dining room is a square, white altar. Each meal is offered up. I have chosen my fruit, a cantaloupe, ripe, mature, without spot or blemish, and wholly pleasing unto me. Take, eat. And so I do. The skin is pale, with faint touches of green that flinch under my threatening fingertips, and faint ridges that speak like braille, silent but enticing.

Not every meal is the Eucharist, but whatever we eat, we eat to Him, and for that matter, whatever we eat is itself a reflection of His death. This melon, green without, orange within, tomb to a thousand seeds, had one work in the world: to hang on a vine that we might live. Now the gift lies dead. My knife slices smoothly into its side, and the juice spurts out, glittering transparent beads in the sunlight. I take my first bite, slurping the living water, licking it from my fingers, sticky-smooth and saccharine, reveling in the sacrifice. Stillness fills the air, reverence and awe in the face of mystery. All of you, drink it.

I can smell the blood in the air, the faint, sweet aroma of death. But the story continues. Every discarded seed can someday bring forth many more. As I rip the flesh from the rind, I receive new life. Like the graveclothes, the peel is left behind, empty, bright green mottled through the last vestiges of orange mortality. In this cantaloupe, we can see resurrection. This supper is the Lord's.