When it became clear in April of 2000 that our church needed to expand, one of the questions the building committee had to address was:  Which way?   We needed new offices, new restrooms, a new nursery, new choir rooms, and we needed to expand and remodel the sanctuary.   We carefully plotted and outlined and drew and redrew.  Finally it was clear where the expansion would take place.

There was one problem!   The alligator juniper trees!   For hundreds of years, these trees had clung to the hillside where the church had been built.  They clung there so long and grew so large that in April of 2000 it looked as though they held the hillside in place.  For years, passersby enjoyed their shade in the summer.  An average man could not reach his arms around either of these two grand trees.  And we were going to have to cut them down.  

Being New Mexicans, we appreciated the strength and tenacity of these trees, which had managed to flourish and grow and finally tower in a very dry, sometimes very cold and trying climate.   They had weathered mountain snows, bent to howling winds up from the desert carrying nothing but white sand, clung firmly through tumultuous mountain downpours, survived poor thin soil, and weathered countless other challenges which beset New Mexico mountain trees.  God created them through the seeds of their forebears, and their roots went deep.  We understood.   They would have to be given a presence in some other way.

Ruben Amezcua, a native of Mexico, a naturalized citizen, and a 25 year resident of Ruidoso, felled the trees for us, and carefully saved trunk sections that might be used for something.  With great care and respect he brought down these monarchs.   But not before we had a plan.

Could the trees be made into a Communion Table for the sanctuary?  Most people said no.  But Harold Scheiner said yes, they can, and he persuaded woodworker friend Larry Rawson to help him accomplish the task.  They worked several months.  The wood had to dry.  Then it was milled at a local sawmill.  Then the wood had to be arduously cut and planed and sanded and glued together.  Oak was shaped to form the base.  Black walnut (the walnut tree fell on Larry’s friend’s home) was used to make the crosses on all sides.  The red and yellow grains of the juniper wood were astounding.  When finished, the Table measured a full 6’ x 4’.  Harold found a glassmaker in Albuquerque who custom made a heavy glass top for the Table, with rough sanded edges and “This Do In Remembrance of Me” etched into the bottom of the glass.

When it was all said and done, and the Table delivered, it weighed 550 pounds and expressed every ounce of grandeur formerly expressed by the trees from which it was so lovingly made.  We had a dedication service.  The sanctuary was full.  Our presbyter, Shannon Webster, cried when he read the prayer over the Table.   We no longer cover the Table with liturgical vestments.  We let the wood stand on its own.

Other members caught the Spirit.  Bob Feerst made hundreds of small crosses from the leftover wood for any who wanted one.  Some made donations to the building fund, enough so that the cost of the Table was covered.   Gary Henry took two pieces of the rough wood and created a cup and a plate on a neighbor’s lathe.  The cup and plate now rest on the Table.

The Lord’s Supper is part of the central theme of every Presbyterian worship service, of every prayer, of every hymn and anthem.  When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper now, we remember what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.  And we thank God for the trees and the hands which shaped the Table which now stands as a permanent symbol of what God has done in our midst.