<html><body><div>Well, let's try part 2 again.</div><div><br></div><div>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Sara Miles, eleven years ago, wrote
a book which Anne Lamott, the well-known writer of both fiction and
non-fiction, described as “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The </i>most
amazing book.”</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Sara grew up in a home where there
was nothing one could and should not discuss or question. Her parents
encouraged her to think, to explore wherever her thoughts took her. They
brought her up to be passionate and compassionate about every human being and
the needs of each one. Yet, she wrote, “My mother nursed a grudge against
Christianity for more than fifty years.” <sup>2 <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></sup>She was the daughter of the manse and
had seen and heard the worst as well as the best of Christian life.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>THIS</u></b>
was Sara’s upbringing and education. Having travelled the world, she was
exposed to poverty, to violence, as well as to great kindnesses and generosity.
Still, religion was without meaning to her, as often as not being the cause of
so much grief and pain in the world.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It is incredible, therefore, to see
the very opening words of this book:</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“One
early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, ate a piece
of bread, took a sip of wine. A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of
Americans – except that up until that moment I’d led a thoroughly secular life,
at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist
crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Eating Jesus, as I did that day to
my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I’d
scorned and work I’d never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be
not a symbolic wafer at all but actual food – indeed, the bread of life. In
that shocking moment of communion, filled with a deep desire to reach for and
become part of a body, I realized that what I’d been doing with my life all
along was what I was meant to do: feed people.” <sup>3</sup></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Notice that Sara Miles didn’t say, I
made a terrible mistake. I’ve wasted forty-plus years of my life. Instead, she
said, “I realized that what I’d been doing with my life all along was what I
was meant to do:”</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This is the Power and Love of Jesus.
This is the Power and Love which is transmitted through the Bread, however
small a fragment, and the Wine, however small a sip. This is Jesus, coming
alive not just in the life of Sara, but in the life of every single one of us
who comes forward, having been invited by Jesus Himself, and who takes the
Bread and the Wine in the hand of each. </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>Who
knows how the Bread and the Wine may change you and me. You might be six years
old. You might be forty-six. You might be ninety-six. It doesn’t matter. Nor
does it matter if this is the first or the thousandth time you have taken Jesus
into your life and body. The transformational Power of Jesus can and does work
anywhere and everywhere, and at any time. And the transformational Power of
Jesus can lead us into life and ministries we may not even imagine.</span></p>
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