It’s Holy Week, and we’ve taken a break from looking at “everything Jesus commanded us” to reflect on events from “Passion Week” – the final week of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry.
Prayer
Before you read, I invite you to pray this prayer based on Psalm 119:106
Lord, accept my offering of praise as I approach Your Word today,
and teach me Your ways so that I may praise You with my life!
Amen.
Briefly prepare your heart in silence, and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your awareness to the voice of God, coming to you through His Word.
Reading
Meals have unique power to connect us as human beings. Meals seem to set us at ease in the company of others. They help to break the awkwardness of meeting new people and not being too sure what to say to them. They facilitate the flow of conversations we might otherwise not have. They allow us time together and create shared memories. Somehow they seem to bond us with those with whom we share the meal.
Perhaps it’s the pleasure hormones released by the act of eating. But, whatever the underlying biological reason might be, the truth remains that shared meals connect us.
Meals also become a ritual of memory. I’m pretty sure most reading this post can remember what your family or household of origin “always” ate on Sunday afternoons, or for Christmas dinner or on Easter Sunday. And now, whenever you eat that selfsame meal, memories of your childhood are triggered.
Personally, for some reason my conscious memory cannot quite unearth, the first bite of a piece of boerewors braaied over a smoky fire will often transport me back (in my memory of course) to the parking lot of a particular shopping centre on a Saturday morning. I don’t particularly remember ever eating boerewors from a stall outside the shops there. But it seems my taste buds must be remembering the first taste of boerewors from some or other church’s fundraising efforts, so far back in my childhood that my conscious mind has no recollection. My point is that meals have a unique power to trigger memory.
Jesus is the incarnate Word of God, through whom everything was created, and who understands the human being better than we will ever understand ourselves. So, when He wanted to give us something by which we could repeatedly remember Him and His sacrificial love for us – and by which we could be bound together in community – He instituted a simple act of remembrance through the sharing of bread and wine. Today, we call this “Communion” or “the Eucharist” or “the Lord’s Supper,” depending on our particular “stream” of Christianity.
Next time you share at the Lord’s Table with your sisters- and brothers-in-Christ, take a moment to ponder the beauty of being bound together with them as fellow recipients of His utterly undeserved love and as His beloved children. What a joy it is to be reminded of these truths through the power of a meal!
Contemplation
How can you make attending communion with your Church Family a priority this Holy Week? How about this coming season of your life? Could you somehow build it into your spiritual journey more intentionally?
Lord Jesus, thank You for the joy and power of Communion when shared with my Church Family. Even more so, thank You for the glorious truth of Your sacrificial love and our belovedness, of which the Communion remind us. Amen.
Dave's Diary 
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