Alma 5-7: Sacramental reflection

This is a follow-up to the reflections on Alma 5-7 I posted earlier today. I wanted to record/share something that occurred to me as I was blessing the sacrament for myself this evening at home. I'd laid out a saltine cracker and a mug of water, and as I was kneeling down getting ready to recite the prayers, I was looking at the cracker and the water, and I thought: "This is my spiritual sustenance? Christ's body and blood given for me—the meal that will make my soul never hunger or thirst—is this?"

[By the way, for those who think that business about "the meal that will make my soul never hunger or thirst" sounds more Catholic than Mormon—read 3 Nephi 20:8.]

And then I thought: Well, there's a lesson here. The food and drink God provides for the nourishment of my soul are simple. But they're adequate.

And then something else came to my mind: If this bread and water represent Christ's redemptive work—Christ's ongoing ministry of sacrificial love for the nourishment, liberation, and sanctification of all people—then they represent not only Christ's gifts to me, meaning Christ's atonement at work in my life. This bread and water also represent the work that Christ carries out in the world through me—the gifts of service that I give to God and others. They're simple. They're small. They're poor. They're maybe even stingy. But they're adequate—or at least acceptable.

That was important because as I was thinking today, and earlier this week, about what I have to learn from Alma 5-7 by way of self-examination, I'd been feeling pricked in my conscience about how little of my time and means I spend in service to others. I mean, I do approach my scholarship and my teaching as forms of service . . . but since that's what I do for a living, it isn't really a freewill offering of the kind I feel I should be giving. And a lot of what I think of as my spiritual practice—daily scripture reading, prayer, the weekly sacrament, the monthly fast, wearing the garment, this blog—these things are really more about my own identity work than they are about service to others.

So as I was preparing to take the sacrament today, I made a couple of concrete commitments: things I'm going to do in the coming months by way of volunteering my time for service to others. And this insight about the bread and water representing Christ's working in me—simple and poor though that work may be—made me feel that my commitment was acceptable. It's not really enough in the big scheme of things, of course. Only total consecration is enough. But in some small way, I'm offering up my gifts to nourish others, and that's good. Even if it is just the equivalent of offering them a saltine and a cup of water.