“Eat, Pray, Love” — a spiritual experience
by Vivian
My bookclub recently read “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia” by Elizabeth Gilbert. Recovering from a divorce, the author spends a year in three different countries: wining and dining in Italy, meditating in an ashram in India, and finding new love in Bali.
Gilbert’s book was an easy read, and I especially enjoyed the premise of the book and the abrupt contrast between Italy and the ashram, but her process of spiritual exploration was somewhat foreign to me (pun intended).
However, I realized that the book title — “Eat, Pray, Love” — is a succinct description of our weekly spiritual experience of the Lord’s Supper:
As we eat the bread, we meditate or pray to God about His love for us, so great “that He gave His only begotten Son,” and we remember how He should be our first love.
Our PACC study of the Lord’s Supper in 2006 has since helped me to reflect during my personal communion experience in a multi-sensory and multi-dimensional way:
- the broken bread represents Jesus’ broken body on the cross
- our church represents a portion of the universal body of believers
- as bread sustains and nourishes our physical bodies, so Jesus sustains and nourishes our souls
- the juice represents Jesus’ blood shed on the cross
- His blood washes us from our sins, white as snow
- we can “taste and see that the Lord is good”
- if we thirst for Him, we will be satisfied
Eat, pray, love — a spiritual yet tangible remembrance of God.
What makes God tangible for you?
January 8th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I would like to add to the Lord’s Supper celebration that you mentioned that when I take the bread and juice I also remember that Jesus was victorious over death. He promised to do this with us in His Kingdom, forseeing that he would rise from the dead.
I am much too logical for my own good sometimes, but when I see the earth continue to turn, the sun to shine, the stars to twinkle, in short to see Creation in all its wonder, God becomes very tangible to me.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
This is not really an answer to your question about what makes God tangible, but it really is a compliment to you for applying the title of the book to your Christian experience.
I’ll write a whole post about this, but too few Christians, I think, make any kind of connection between the things they see in life, however mundane or spectacular, and the one who gives life to all things.
Blessed are those eyes that see….