The Lord's Supper

Ideally, the Lord’s Supper should always be a time of worship. At times, though, I confess that my mind wanders around the world of trivial things.

But one particular communion a few years ago stands out exceptionally in my mind. It had been exactly one week since one of my best friends had been in a horrible car accident. She had been lingering in a coma in Huntsville Hospital for 7 days.

With each day that passed, we thought, “This will be the day that Kathy wakes up, and has to discover that her 10-yr-old daughter did not wake up from the wreck.” So we only left the hospital periodically to take care of pressing needs, then returned to the Neurological Intensive Care Unit to….wait. To wait for that moment that we could be with Kathy when she heard the worst news of her life. And to wait for reports about her own damaged body.

So on day 7, after a long Saturday night sleeping on the floors and uncomfortable furniture of the 8th floor waiting room, we woke up Sunday morning to another special friend coming to sit vigil with us. She held in her hands a small box. As she opened up the sacraments representing body and blood, we sat together in the waiting room, along with Kathy’s mother, and prayed to our shared God with words of desperation and recognition of our total dependence on His mercy.

We broke the bread; we drank the juice, like we had done hundreds of times together before. But this time we communed deeper with each other and deeper with God than we had in a long time.

We worshiped.

Sometimes, that’s all we have left to do. And at all times, it’s the best thing to do.

Lisa