No, it's not time for me to wax poetic about French cuisine. Today was that time of the month when our church celebrates the Last Supper by passing out bread & wine. Now our church does it right, we don't have little tablets, nor do we have little perfect wafers of matzah, instead it's a large loaf of bread. White, not sourdough, but that's ok. We do the little cups of Welch's, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I understand. Interesting story about Welch's, but that may be for the TV.
So as I sit there staring at the bread and juice, some thoughts hit me. It's been a rough day, a rough week, hell, it's been a pretty crappy month. And as I sit there staring at the bread, I start to think of how I am the breadwinner of my home. I work, Nikki maintains the house. So I'm staring at the bread thinking of how hard I've been working in the past few weeks to earn tiny pieces of bread. And I see the loaves taken away after everyone grabbed a piece, I see how much there was left. Truly a sea of plenty. So maybe if I work a little easier, I'll still have plenty of bread for my family.
Then I look at the juice. And I think on how Jesus offered wine to the Disciples, not grape juice. He wasn't afraid of wine, in fact several of his parables (wineskins, vine and branches, etc.) were about wine. So if He had no issues with drinking wine, why do some Christians have such an issue with it. Now, you wonder, why would I have that thought? I was nursing a hangover, chewing on a small piece of white bread, and thinking of the guilt I felt. I felt guilty to enjoy a single beer, let alone some nice Moscatto. Don't even get me started on the guilt associated with Kamikaze night...
And then it hits me. Jesus wants us to enjoy the nice and wonderful and beautiful things in life. To let go of guilt and focus instead on the beautiful life on Earth we're given. To stop worrying about the bread. To not only focus on the wine. But to enjoy both in harmony. An interesting thought. That life is to be enjoyed, like the taste of a beautiful wine, while working in harmony with the chance to better ourselves, and break bread with others. An interesting thought...
