No Apple Juice

This should be quite familiar to most parents with young kids. The kids squabble over something without an end in sight and I resort to telling them that the next person who opens his or her mouth will not receive a treat. If we are on our way to a restaurant, I would tell them that their apple juice is at stake. If they are on their way home, it would usually be their TV time. In many cases, the results are instantaneous. Thank God for the parental authority to withhold apple juice and TV time from screaming kids.

Last Sunday, we were on our way to the evening Communion Service in church. I can't remember what started the squabble this time but as usual it went on and on between the two younger kids. To end the fight, I wanted to tell them that whoever spoke next will not receive the bread and the grape juice, which they serve during Communion. Fortunately, I caught myself before I verbalised my thoughts and stuck to the apple-juice-for-dinner threat.

In that moment, it struck me once again how special the gift of the Communion is. In trying to correct the wrong and hopefully allow an important lesson to stick, I sometimes resort to withholding a treat or make the kids stand in the corner. When in the car, there are no isolating corners, so it has to be the former. But with God, when he saw the mess that we've created for ourselves, he responded with the Christmas plan. And Christmas bears its full meaning when it is seen in the light of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. When something needs forgiving and fixing, the gift of the Holy Communion reminds us that the deed is already done, and all we need to do is to receive it. What God has given, nobody can withhold.

In the season of Advent, I am reminded of the great hope that we have that one day God will right all our wrongs. On that day, we will finally understand that no form of human deprivation, whether it is terrorism, slavery, child-abuse or world hunger, can hold back God's love from prevailing. And until that day, we must try to live with hope and not despair, with care and not with indifference, with faith so that we are not caged in by fear. We must continue to strive to do good and when we fall short, allow the Communion meal to remind us that we are in good hands because God has it all covered.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”(which means “God with us”).

                                                                                                                                  ~ Matthew 1: 22- 23