Meditations on the Lord's Supper
John Willison
Reformation Press, Stornoway, 1990, £1.80,
ISBN 1 872556 00 0 Publisher website
How do you prepare for the Lord's Supper? Hopefully you examine yourself in relation to appropriately challenging passages of Scripture and seek to acknowledge your condition in prayer. Sometimes, however, if we are honest, we find it difficult to maintain the right frame of spiritually-mindedness. These meditations stir the soul and provide an example of those spiritual breathings that we long for. There are nine meditations for before going to the table and eight for afterwards.
John Willison, best known as the author of the Mother's Catechism, ministered in Dundee almost 300 years ago. The language is not particularly dated, however, and the booklet is at a price that anyone could afford. Although they are short, only about a page and a half, they are especially full of the spiritual power of Scripture imagery as the following quotation shows.
O if our Lord Jesus Christ's love and glory would come flowing like a full sea, or the rushing of a mighty wind, and fill all the corners of His house and of His table, that great grace might be on all His people. O to hear a sound of going in the tops of the mulberry trees, a sign that God is gone forth before us to smite the hosts of our lusts, and triumph over our enemies. O that the kindly breathings and prosperous gales of God's Spirit would enliven all the drooping hearts, and fill all the empty sails of wind-bound communicants. O that the heavenly wind would blow from the right airth, that poor leaky vessels might come speed in their voyage, and sail straight forward to the shores of Emmanuel's land.
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