The Bread and the Wine.

Today's worship service was done a little differently than we normally do. We included all kids- age birth through 5th grade, in the beginning of the service. The goal was to give them exposure to worship as well as to taking communion. The 1st-5th grades have been learning about what communion is all about and about the relationship they need to have with Jesus Christ before taking communion. This gave them and their parents the perfect opportunity to really discuss their relationships with Jesus and if they were ready to take communion or not.

Naturally, having a 2 and 4 year old, my kids were with me in the service for the beginning portion of it. Caleb got to see me take communion and was asking some good questions. I didn't allow him to take communion for the simple fact that he is still too young to understand what it all means. He says he loves Jesus and he loves God, but I don't think he quite understands what that entails.

Here is what our conversation sounded like while the elements were being passed out and taken.

As the bread was being passed, Caleb: "Mom! What are you doing? What is that?"

Me as I'm taking a piece of bread: "This is bread. We pretend that it is Jesus' body. When Jesus died on the cross for us, it showed us how much He loves us so we can live forever with Him in heaven."

Caleb: "Oh. I love Jesus. Can I have some?"

Me: "Not today sweetie. When you are older, you can have some!" 

As the juice was being passed, Caleb: "What is that?"

Me: "This is juice. We pretend that it is Jesus' blood. When Jesus died for us, His blood is what saved us and lets us go to heaven."

Caleb: "Oh. Now whatcha gunna do?"

Me: "We need to wait for Pastor Josh to tell us what to do. He is going to read from The Bible and pray."

After the pastor was finished blessing the elements and reading from Matthew 26 we were given the instructions to eat the bread.

I put the bread in my mouth and Caleb said extremely loud: "Mom!!!!!! Why did you just eat Jesus?!?!?!"

I tried not to laugh and told him that we eat the bread to help us remember that Jesus lives in us. He just sat there looking at me like I was crazy and had just commited some horrible crazy act!

It was time for the juice. Caleb: "MOM!!!!!!!!!!! You just drank blood?! Jesus' blood?!"

Me: "Yes Caleb, it's ok, remember we are just pretending that it's Jesus' blood and body. It's not really his body and his blood. We are just remembering."

Caleb: "I wanna go back to my class now. I don't like this one bit!"