Commune with Us

When the pandemic began. I was one week into a brand new job, one of my sons was in Lanett with me after deciding to take a semester break from college, the other son was 30 minutes away working at a bank and living in Auburn, and Bobby was way up in Pennsylvania working on an oil and gas project. 

This was fairly normal for our family, but the lock down hit us just as hard as everyone else. We were new to Lanett, even though I grew up here. We had my mom and old friends, but we didn’t know many other people. 

In that year when everything stopped, on a dime, in a second, everything shifted. Everything changed. School looked remarkably like homeschooling for everyone. Work, even when you were working on a team, was done solo. And, church, well, church made me feel more remote than anything.

The shut down in Alabama started about a week before my husband and I were going to join a new church. I was looking forward to getting to know people. Having lunch with ladies I wanted to discuss missions and service opportunities with, having people over for meals that started out slightly awkward then ended in sighs and thankfulness over true connection. I was looking forward to beginnings.

But, we were all sent home to work alone, learn alone and even worship alone.

Bread and fish after an Easter Sunday service
standing by Niagra Falls

During the first Facebook service our church offered, my son, Allen, and I sang along to worship songs and read the scripture text for the morning. We listened to the sermon and bowed our heads in prayer. Molly, our dog, enjoyed the service with us, snuggled in Allen’s lap. Then, communion. 

The person leading the communion part of the service asked those at home to take a minute to “gather supplies.” Allen and I paused the video then scampered into the kitchen to lay our hands on the first things we could find. Anything that might work as a stand in for bread and wine, anything that might somehow help us turn our thoughts to the sacrifice of Christ.

I’ll admit this was kind of hard for me to begin with. I once had a friend describe communion at a camp her family attended. The children and adults at the camp shared in a communion meal of Coke and donuts. I kind of thought that was stretching the bounds of acceptable church behavior. Not sacrilegious, but getting there. 

So, it was with a bit of unease that I grabbed the first things my eyes landed on, leftover Domino’s garlic knots from dinner the night before and Milo’s sweet tea from the refrigerator. I cut two small pieces of buttery, parsley-flecked bread and put them on a small plate. I poured a couple of ounces of sweet tea into two, small, SEC Hall of Fame, plastic cups. I carried them to the family room and sat them on the trunk we use for a coffee table.

As the service continued, we were asked to share the elements with each other. 

“The body of Christ. 

Thanks be to God. 

The blood of Christ. 

Thanks be to God.” 

Allen and I took turns holding the plate, shyly and awkwardly saying the words. We each took our cup afterward and briefly held the tea aloft, almost toasting each other before taking a sip. 

Then, it was quiet. We listened to the music being played on Spring Road Christian Church’s Facebook page and settled back into our places on the couch. I closed my eyes thanking the Lord for all He has done, for all He continues to do for me - in me and around me. 

And, in that moment I felt peaceful, loved. Like God was present in the room, the smell of garlic hanging in the air like incense, the tumble of blankets on the couch needing to be folded. Like He didn’t care what we had eaten for communion, He just wanted to commune with us. To be invited, to be remembered. 

And, He was, even with such humble elements made holy by His very presence.

A gift of wine
brewed in a college fermenting class

Before the pandemic most of my experiences with communion were very reverent and saintly. Like the time I met a young woman who had briefly lived in the home of a pastor. She said every Saturday he ground wheat kernels by hand and baked bread loaves for communion at his church the next day. 

Or at my wedding where we had a freshly made, beautiful loaf of bread made by our pastor’s wife. We also had Sprite. Someone, me probably, had forgotten we needed grape juice for the communion part of our ceremony. I wondered why Brother Webb was looking at me so intently as I took the chalice. I didn’t stop to think about it in the moment, but I did briefly wonder why there were bubbles in the “juice.”

The lock down chipped away at some of my closely held ideals of what communion should look like. During the pandemic, in our communion celebrations, we shared cheese straws and water, pieces of sandwich bread and orange juice, crackers and Coke. It hasn’t been the same communion meal twice, but it was special and sweet and, dare I say it, holy, every time. 

Because the thing about communion isn’t what you’re eating, grape juice and hard, tiny wafers or wine and bread, or Coke and donuts, it’s what you’re remembering. It’s what you’re choosing to partake in. And, that’s the Body and Blood of Christ. 

Sitting in an easily accessible place on the shelf in my kitchen is a book called Bread and Wine. It’s a book with stories about food and meals and friends. It has the biscuit recipe I make many Sunday nights, a delicious vinaigrette salad dressing, and the decadent sounding Dark Chocolate Sea Salted Toffee. In this book, Shauna Niequist, the author, talks about how important bread and wine are not only as elements that fill our bodies, but as indelible marks on the life of a believer in Jesus. She says,

“Bread is bread, and wine is wine, but bread-and-wine is another thing entirely. 

The two together are the sacred and the material at once, 

the heaven and the earth, the divine and the daily.”

Shauna Niequist, Bread and Wine 

I’m so thankful the lock down is behind us, that we gather each Sunday, together, to worship and pray, to hug each other and shake hands, to hear the Word of God and take communion. Beautiful loaves of white bread, dipped in a bowl of scarlet juice. But, Allen would like everyone to know he’d appreciate more opportunities to have church with his dog. 

You Can't Handle the Truth

Hello world. I've missed you. For one reason and another, I haven't been writing. I've been thinking and working and other stuff, but not writing. Even this article, I didn't write recently. It's a repost from February 2019. But, I thought I'd share it with you anyway. I hope you're well.

Amy

        Waiting at gate A17 in San Antonio for my flight, I reached into my cute, little, pink purse for a pen. I drew my hand out with a pen in my fingers and sugar/cinnamon grit under my fingernails. I had swept the grit off my table only moments ago, not realizing I had baptized my purse with a sweet sprinkling, leftovers from a feeble attempt to drown my sorrows with CinnaSweeties from the Cinnabon a few gates back.

            I kept thinking I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be here. My only consolation the fact that I’d just checked my carry-on bag for free all the way to Harrisburg. No more bumping it down the center aisle to the peril of passengers nearby, hefting it into the overhead bin or sweet talking someone else into doing it. Now I just had my super heavy “personal item” to contend with, the memory of those delicious CinnaSweeties, and “wash your purse” added to my mental to-do list.

            Soon my flight would start boarding and I would to get up, gather my things and walk onto a plane propelling me over 1000 miles from my husband, Bobby. A series of weird and unusual circumstances lead to that disheartening reflection. Long story short, my husband’s job occasionally separates us. He’s asked to be at a job “yesterday,” I’m left to pack all the things we continue to accumulate and carry on the life we’ve been living. All without him.

            Getting on the flight felt wrong and I felt profoundly sad, weighed down with the enormity of the task at hand. Instead, I wanted to be sitting on the porch of Bobby’s cottage, watching the clouds cross the big, blue sky. I wanted to prop my feet on the porch railing, looking for the calf we saw moments after it’s birth only to lose sight of it later that afternoon.

     If you were to sit down beside me in that moment at gate A17, you wouldn’t see tears and tissues. But I could feel the tension of holding them in creeping up the back of my neck, seeping around my head to set up shop in my left temple and jaw. Apparently, I’m a very good actress. No one around seemed to notice I was about to burst into sobs or jump up and run out of the airport.

            “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”

            How often is this phrase uttered by well-meaning friends and clueless Hallmark cards? In my experience, it’s just not true.

            Maybe you have a different kind of relationship with God, but in my dealings with the Almighty, He regularly introduces new scenes into my life that exceed my capabilities or coping mechanisms. Like Carson showing an unwelcome guest into the library on Downton Abbey, God often heralds new seasons and experiences that I can’t handle.

            It happened when my dad got sick and passed away all in two weeks. It came around when my knees needed to be replaced and I could no longer summon the desire to walk to the back of the grocery store for cheese. And I have felt it’s unwelcome presence each of the three times Bobby has moved for his job months ahead of me and our boys.

            I can’t handle that stuff. I want to go to bed or eat cookie dough or get in my car and start driving aimlessly. God can fix all these woes and so much more. He can fix anything. He can handle anything that’s thrown at Him or at me.

            But, often He doesn’t.

            In 2 Corinthians 12:10, the author Paul says we should delight in suffering and weakness. He says when we’re weak, that’s when we’re really strong. He should know. God gave Paul a hum-dinger of a story to tell. He was stoned and left adrift at sea. He was beaten and shipwrecked three times each. Paul couldn’t handle that stuff. No one could.

            We’re told God goes with us. “He will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:6) Paul knew that verse from the Old Testament and I assume he believed it. Otherwise, why in the world would he have set foot on a boat again after one shipwreck, let alone two?

            I recently looked up the names of God completely expecting to find The God Who’s Got It Handled smushed between The Ancient of Days and The Lord is Peace.  It may not surprise you that this very eloquent and relevant suggestion isn’t on any of the lists I referenced. Not a one, however true it may be.

            God took care of Noah and his family amid a world overrun by wickedness. He had a plan of victory for Joshua in marching around the city of Jericho. And, of course, He orchestrated the holy rescue mission of Jesus coming to earth as a helpless baby, saving us from ourselves and our sin.

            From a human perspective, all these situations seemed unlikely to work out. They all appeared to be bad ideas. Some might call you crazy if you were to suggest them today. But God used each for His victory, His glory and His people’s good.

            Nowhere does the Bible say God won’t give us more than we can handle. Not being able to handle stuff is kind of what we human beings are known for. It’s what we do and why we’re here. If we could handle everything that comes our way, why would we need God? In fact, John 16:33 tells us we will have trouble in this life. Jesus encourages us to take heart. When we trust Him to take care of us, we can have peace because Jesus has already overcome the whole world.

            I know for a fact God will keep giving me things I can’t handle. He made me and knows exactly how pressed and perplexed I can get. Yet, He continues to plop hard, unexpected things in my lap. He knows good and well I’ll soon be out of my depth, struggling to stay afloat, my nose barely breaking the surface of the situation while my arms and legs flail to stay in control.

            The older I get the quicker I realize I can’t take it. I’m much quicker to call out to God. Only then does God get to show up and show off. He gets to make a display of Himself that I can point to when someone asks, “How do you handle all that?”

            So… be like Paul and jump back in that boat. We often can’t handle whatever is coming around the bend. But the God Who’s Got It Handled? He certainly can.