Luke 22:19

“Do this in remembrance of me.”

— Luke 22:19

A young man came to me one morning, holding a letter in his hand. Opening it, he showed me some pressed flowers and leaves. "My sister gathered these from my mother's grave," he said, with a voice soft and tender. Then he told me about his mother, her beautiful life, her deeds of self-denial, her loving counsels, her prayers, lingering especially on her long illness, when she faded like a flower.

"It was ten years ago," he said, "ten years ago, this very day, that she died; but it seems as if it were only yesterday." The faded flowers and leaves from her grave, had brought back the memories in all their vividness.

Perhaps you have in your home, some memento of a departed friend. Every time you see it—it recalls your friend. This suggests why Jesus gave us the Last Supper. He would keep his love and death always fresh in our mind. "My people will forget me, and what I have suffered for them. The memory of my sacrifice will fade out as the years pass. I will give them this memorial, so that each time they take the bread and the cup, they may freshly remember me." So all these centuries, the Lord's Supper has kept the memory of the love and sacrifice of Christ fresh in the hearts of his people, and this memory has made all the world sweeter and gentler.