Dining And The Lord's Supper

Each year as I return from Vietnam, I immediately jump back into inservice. This is from August 5, 2014.

Good afternoon from Jonesboro, Texas where we've stopped at the One Stop store for gas but they didn’t have coffee! Oh well, we’re stopping again shortly because they didn’t take our gas card. We’re on our way back from Abilene and the Texas Christian School Association beginning of school conference. We usually take all of our faculty but we this year, we started a rotation. It was terrific as it always is. Hosted by Abilene Christian University, it featured meaningful worship, wonderful presentations, and renewed friendships. One other thing- they fed us well. Lunch and dinner were both provided and both were amazing. Lunch was barbecue and all that goes with that delicacy. Supper was chicken and beef along with salad, scalloped potatoes, green beans with almonds, rolls, and pecan pie for dessert. We ate a continental breakfast this morning at the La Quinta Inn; yogurt, muffins, orange juice, apple, coffee or a breakfast that is pretty typical for the US.

The first question I’m asked about Vietnam is predictably about food. I love eating in Vietnam but I’m always glad to return to my normal foods here at home. One reason is breakfast. As I noted earlier, what I ate for breakfast today was distinctly different from what we had for lunch and supper yesterday. That was not the case for the most part in Vietnam where the three meals of the day tend to be interchangeable. The food I eat in Vietnam is not all that much different from one meal to the next with the exception of pho' several times was waiting for me when I got up and fish was never served at the morning meal. It was always delicious, no matter what it was!

But while the dietary habits of Vietnamese and Americans vary, there is one place where the two are the same. When American Christians and Vietnamese Christians take communion, the meal is identical. Both eat the bread representing the body of Jesus and drink the cup representing His blood. There is a oneness as we remember the Savior, just as He taught us, with cultural differences keeping their distance. Nhi was baptized last Monday in the Mekong River. Late that night, a number of us took her to eat down by the same river where her sins were washed away hours before. But while that was her first meal as a Christian, it wasn't her first Christian meal. That came last Sunday as she for the first time communed with her relatives who are now also her brothers and sisters in Christ. They ate just what we ate in Houston twelve hours later. The family that eats together.....well, you know the rest. Welcome to your second family, Nhi!


Applicable quote of the day:
"Clothe yourselves with meekness and be renewed in faith—that is, the flesh of the Lord—and in love—that is, the blood of Jesus Christ."
Ignatius (Letter to the Trallians 8)

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
www.stevehawley.blogspot.com
E-mail me at steve@hawleybooks.com