From James Davison Hunter's recent book, To Change the World:

Pursuit, identification, the offer of life through sacrificial love—this is what God's faithful presence means. It is a quality of commitment that is active, not passive; intentional, not accidental; covenantal, not contractual. In the life of Christ we see how it entailed his complete attention. It was whole-hearted, not half-hearted; focused and purposeful, nothing desultory about it. His very name, Immanuel, signifies all of this—"God with us"—in our presence (Matt. 1:23).

And the point of God's active and committed presence, of course, has always been to restore our relationship with him. This, of course, is the meaning of the Eucharist. God's coming to us, his becoming flesh and blood like us, and his atoning sacrifice for us are manifested in the bread and the wine that is fed to us. His faithful presence is manifested in the body that was broken and the blood that was shed for the remission of sins. In the Eucharist, we not only have a backward-looking remembrance of what God accomplished long ago but we have a celebration of the start of God's restoration in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. In the Eucharist, Christians celebrate the in-breaking of the new creation within the framework of the old; the kingdom that is to come within the present.

I continue to insist that if we truly believed and understood all that is signified in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, our partaking of it would occur with far greater frequency. Bavinck has noted that the Supper is 'not merely a reminiscence of or a reflection on Christ's benefits but a most intimate bonding with Christ himself, just as food and drink are united with the body.' Indeed, to use Hunter's terminology, it is a visible sign and seal of God's faithful presence among us. How is it, then, that we do not run to the Table as often as we can?