Last night, the fam went to visit a church much closer to us than the one we've been attending...we heard about it through our new chiropractor (who is awsome-but that's another cool God-story for another day), and decided to head to the Saturday evening service since Adam had to work at 4am Sunday morning. Our kiddos (the older 2, anyway) are pretty used to the whole let's-try-a-new-church routine, so mostly they were just excited to meet some new friends. Adam and I were quite impressed with the children's ministry, the campus, etc. and headed into the service with the Littlest Bleger to check it out. We made it for the last song of the normal worship set (of course-who gets to church on time with a 3 week old? I don't, anyways...), sat down, and were pleasantly surprised to find out that they were about to take communion. Actually, the church does it every week-which is pretty cool. Most churches I've gone to do it maybe once a month. Here, yup, it's a part of the service every week.
*for those of you not familiar with the concept of communion (also known as the Lord's Supper), a super quick explanation...the night before Jesus Christ was arrested, he had dinner with his 12 disciples-those men closest to him. At the end of the meal, he took a loaf of bread, broke it, and told them "this bread is a symbol of my body, broken for you (referring to his upcoming crucifixion); eat it in remembrance of me," then, he took a glass of wine and told them, "This wine is my blood shed for you; drink it in remembrance of me," (my own paraphrase...from Luke chapter 22). Now, we're not talking cannibalism or anything weird here. Christ-followers (ie, Christians...of which I am gladly one) take communion to remember the sacrifice Jesus made for us: He died in the place of every person in the world, taking our sins on his blameless shoulders, so we wouldn't get the punishment we deserve (hell) but could spend eternity with Him if we accept His free gift. It's a beautiful, breathtaking gift offered to each of us and those of us who have accepted it see communion as a holy, sacred time to remember what was done for us.
So. The lights dimmed, the baby was asleep, and I settled in to spend a sacred moment with my Father. The plate with the tiny crackers and cups of grape juice passed us, and I took one of each...just like always. Adam whispered to me that he thought we were just supposed to take it on our own...the speaker had said something about putting the cup back when you were done. I hadn't thought that meant right away...so I bowed my head, closed my eyes, had a little time of prayer, ate my tiny cracker, lifted the tiny cup to my lips...
yup.
empty.
I somehow hadn't noticed at all for a good 3 or 4 minutes that I'd taken an empty cup. Which, on one hand, eww-I put some random stranger's cup to my lips. On the other hand-really?? How do you not notice the cup is empty for the entire time you're holding it??
My husband says he's now questioning my salvation.
Me?
I'm just questioning my sanity.
Now I'm going to be paranoid when that plate comes around next week...
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