But I remembered a Christian friend telling me about her missionary parents, when they were prisoners in a Chinese prison camp and there was absolutely no bread available, how they knew God understood and even substituted a bit of ground up rice.
I would do so today, I decided. My throat could handle rice gruel. Surely, God would understand if today, I was wanting to remember the sinless body of the Lord Jesus given in my behalf yet could not physically ingest the actual unleavened bread.
And for now, I've been trying to keep everything rather bland. Even the "umeboshi", or dried plum, sometimes used in the "okayu", or Japanese rice gruel, is a bit too spicy for me. But the commercially prepared-for-okayu umeboshi is somehow made without that sharp taste, plus it's very soft and easy to mash--I would add a few drops of warm water to dissolve it into a juice to drink for communion. After all, scripture does say "fruit of the vine", not necessarily grape juice, and it was to commemorate the blood of the Lord Jesus.
So I decided I would participate in the Lord's Supper after all. And I was happy.
But my husband, who had been asked to bring the rice gruel and dried plum (I was planning on making the juice myself) didn't bring them in until after the service was finished. I hadn't told him what I'd planned on doing, so he probably thought it was just lunch, so not wanting to interrupt had waited until everything was over!
But one of them read the passage in I Cor. 11 for me--a person who had thought of going to Turkey then served several years in Japan--and his wife (an MK from Nigeria) prayed when we were done.
I think today, I remembered the Lord's Body in a much different way. It was because of the Cross that we could be part of this, His Body, isn't it?
I hope I never, ever forget what He has done for us!
