Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning.
[00:00:05] If you don't know me, my name is Jesse, one of the pastors here.
[00:00:10] I think this morning we have a cool, unique opportunity. We've finished our Advent series, and it's the last Sunday of the year before we move forward into a new year.
[00:00:24] When I was younger, I always just kind of smiled and nodded when people said that time seems like it moves faster and faster. But now that I have some years behind me, I realize it is true. Time definitely seems to go faster and faster as the years go by. And I feel like this year just blew by. It seems like I took a breath and it happened and now it's done. So I think what I'd like for us to do this morning is take a little bit of a step back, take a breath, slow down. We're not going through a sermon series. There's not an agenda. We have the opportunity just to slow down and reflect a little bit.
[00:01:08] Next week, Sam is going to start the new year. He's going to pick back up with things that we have on the agenda. But this morning, we can hopefully take a little bit of a breath. And I'd like us to take a minute to look backwards, to spend some time reflecting on some of the foundational truths of scripture and think about how we may or may not be following them in our own lives and how we can look forward to make changes potentially in the new year.
[00:01:44] So with that, we're going to be In Deuteronomy, chapter 6, if you want to go ahead and turn there and let me just take a minute to set up the context of this for you.
[00:01:55] So shortly after God brought his people out of Egypt, they made a covenant with God. If you don't know what a covenant is, this is an important part of understanding how God interacts with his people throughout Scripture. And a covenant is an agreement between God and people.
[00:02:15] It's sort of like a contract, but a little bit more complicated than that. And there are several different types of covenants. But the one that's relevant for us here is that God and the people made what's called a bilateral covenant, which means that both sides agreed to something.
[00:02:33] In this case, God agreed and promised that the people of Israel would be his people.
[00:02:41] He would watch over them, he would take care of them, he would provide for them, and he would directly lead them. And he promised that he would lead them to a land, he would give them a place for their own. He would make them into a great nation.
[00:02:58] Those were the promises that God made. And in return, the people promised that they would follow the laws that God gave to them through Moses, which was the Ten Commandments, and the other laws that we see in Exodus and Deuteronomy.
[00:03:12] And the specific nature of this covenant is laid out in these books, and it details what are called blessings and curses. So part of a covenant, especially a bilateral covenant, is that there are. God lays out these blessings and curses. And essentially the blessings are the things that will happen if the people follow the covenant, and the curses are the things that will happen if they do not follow the covenant.
[00:03:38] So the people hear all of this, and In Exodus chapter 19, we get their response, which is that all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. So, the people agree to this covenant. They agree to follow what God has said, and they agree to uphold their end of the bargain.
[00:03:57] Now, unfortunately, it wasn't very long before the people's sin took over, and they reject God's favor and provision.
[00:04:05] They turn to other gods. They ignore the things that God was saying to them and trying to lead them in through Moses, and they fail to believe that God would actually uphold his end of the bargain. So they turn to other things.
[00:04:20] And this all kind of culminates in God leading them to this promised land that he had provided for them. And them seeing the people who were already there and then turning away because of fear, because of their refusal to follow God's provision and go into the land that he had provided for them. And their refusal and inability to follow their side of the covenant promises as God had promised, the curses kicked in.
[00:04:51] And as God had promised would happen, he sends them back into the wilderness where they spend the rest of their lives. This entire generation of people that God had promised and provided for is forced to wander in the wilderness for the entire rest of their lives, where they all perish and die off.
[00:05:14] Added on to this, we have Moses, who is reaching the end of his life. And due to his own anger and sin, God has also told him that he will not be able to enter the promised land.
[00:05:28] So Moses leads this next generation of people, the children of the people who failed to follow God's commands and the covenant. He leads them to the edge of the promised land. And this is where the book of Deuteronomy picks up. The book is essentially Moses's sermon or message to these children of this failed generation, hoping and praying that they will do a better job than their parents did.
[00:05:59] And that's the context that I want us to keep in mind as we talk about this passage today.
[00:06:06] Moses is a part of this generation who largely failed to follow God's commands. He's speaking to this younger generation, hoping and praying that they will do a better job.
[00:06:18] That brings us to our passage. So read with me. If we're going to be in Deuteronomy, chapter six, we're going to cover verses one through nine.
[00:06:27] And this is Moses speaking to the people. He says, this is the command, the statutes and ordinances. The Lord your God has commanded me to teach you so that you may follow them in the land you are about to enter and possess.
[00:06:41] Do this so that you may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life. By keeping all his statutes and commands, I'm giving you your son and your grandson.
[00:06:51] And so that you may have a long life.
[00:06:54] Listen, Israel, and be careful to follow them so that you may prosper and multiply greatly. Because the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey.
[00:07:07] Listen, Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.
[00:07:11] Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
[00:07:17] These words that I'm giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
[00:07:28] Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates.
[00:07:36] This is the word of God for us this morning.
[00:07:41] Pray with me, Father. God, we thank you for your word.
[00:07:47] We thank you for the opportunity that you give us to slow down a bit, to reflect, to take a look at some of these foundational truths that you give us. These things that are so core to who you are and who you call us to be.
[00:08:06] Jesus, I pray that this morning you would prepare our hearts.
[00:08:10] You would give us eyes to see and hear what yout have for us.
[00:08:15] That you would speak directly into our. Our own circumstances, our own hearts, and allow us to set aside our.
[00:08:25] Our selfishness and our pride and all of the things that keep us from responding to youo, God. And help us to hear your Word and respond.
[00:08:35] Thank you, Jesus. Amen.
[00:08:38] All right, so we have Moses giving this message to the children of those who God let out of Egypt.
[00:08:46] He's hoping and praying that they'll do a better job than their parents did at following God's commands. And he starts out the book of Deuteronomy with this brief history of what their parents went through. He's reminding Them that their parents were enslaved in Egypt. And the things that God did for them to bring them out of Egypt. And the way that he led them through the wilderness.
[00:09:10] Then he gives them this brief recap of the law, letting them know what the terms of the covenant between God and their parents were. These statutes and ordinances, these are the blessings of the covenant that Moses lays out here in our passage. In a very literal sense, God has promised them long life, prosperity, that they'll multiply, and that God will give to them a land flowing with milk and honey.
[00:09:36] Now, I know for us in this time and place, living on the other side of Jesus's work on the cross. I think, especially where we live, that there's a bit of a.
[00:09:50] We're just conditioned, I think, to.
[00:09:53] Because of the prosperity gospel being such a big deal in our country, it can be tempting to go completely the opposite direction and believe that God doesn't care at all about our physical circumstances. But that's not what Scripture says.
[00:10:07] That's probably another sermon. But God truly does care about his people's physical needs and circumstances. And he makes very lavish promises to the people here.
[00:10:23] The reality for these Israelites is that their physical safety and success and longevity as a nation with was directly tied to them following God's covenant.
[00:10:35] And then Moses reminds the people that after hearing all the terms of the covenant, he gave them the Ten Commandments. He told them what the terms of the covenant were, that they themselves had decided to recommit themselves to that covenant. This group of people, these children, had now decided that they were also going to commit to the covenant, that they were going to accept the blessings and the curses, and they were going to commit themselves to being the people of God.
[00:11:02] And then Moses gives them here what's described by him and by Jesus as the greatest commandment. You're probably familiar with it. He says, listen, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
[00:11:20] This command, called the Shema, is the central thread that runs through the entirety of Deuteronomy.
[00:11:27] Jesus also calls this the greatest commandment. This becomes an important daily prayer for the Israelite people.
[00:11:35] God emphasizes how important this is for them.
[00:11:40] So let's talk about it for a minute. The word that he starts with here, listen, or in Hebrew, it's Shema, means more than to simply hear.
[00:11:51] There's a phrase that I've said, I'm sure, probably thousands of times to my children at this point. It's Become one of the central things that I've tried to instill in them from an early age. It's this phrase, listen and obey.
[00:12:04] It's not because I'm.
[00:12:07] It's not because I'm trying to be a tyrant who they have to blindness, you know, blindly obey. It's because I want them to learn exactly what God is trying to teach the people here.
[00:12:19] That listening is more than just hearing.
[00:12:23] Listening is hearing. Having that enter into you and change and then you actually follow the things that are being said. And that's what God is saying here. That's what the word shema means. It means more than just to hear. It means to listen and obey.
[00:12:40] So listen and obey to what?
[00:12:42] It starts out with this.
[00:12:44] The Lord our God, The Lord is one.
[00:12:47] Well, first off, this directly combats the former generations sin. One of these primary issues that they faced is that they continually tried to turn back and worship the Egyptian gods that they were raised with.
[00:13:04] And it speaks forward to one of the primary issues that these generations will face. Entering into the land of Canaan, the people there worshiped many gods. Gods of the sun, gods of the weather, sex, war, and many others.
[00:13:19] God is making a statement here that none of those other gods are real, that his people are to worship the one true God himself. Their God was one, the only God, the only one for them to worship.
[00:13:32] And then he continues and tells them to love the Lord their God with all of their heart, soul and strength.
[00:13:39] In Hebrew, the word used here for love is more than simply just a nice fuzzy emotional feeling.
[00:13:47] It's a wholehearted commitment to God that involves not just our emotions and hearts, but also our will and our mind.
[00:13:54] Love in this context is a choice, one that's made daily and takes all of us, not just apart.
[00:14:02] I think it's important for us to set this in our own minds, to realize that this is not just some Old Testament thing that we are okay to ignore. Not that we should ignore anything that's in the Bible, but this is a statement of purpose that's not just for these ancient Israelites, but it's for us as well.
[00:14:21] If we are Christians, if we're called to follow Jesus, then we are called to have this as central to our lives as well. In fact, that's the entire reason why we were created. To love God in return for his love is one of those foundational truths in scripture that we shouldn't move too quickly past.
[00:14:44] I think it's easy for us to look at a passage like this to think about our modern Day world and think, well, I'm not tempted to worship other gods. We don't live in a society with a bunch of other gods. It isn't as easy as that.
[00:14:59] We are sinful humans. And just like ancient people, we are just as prone to worship idols now as we always have been.
[00:15:08] They just look different.
[00:15:09] They may not be made of stone and metal, but now they are our children or that sports team or the bank account or the celebrity or the side business. Whatever it is in our lives that subtly, or sometimes not so subtly, tries to creep its way into priority in our lives, into first place over God.
[00:15:31] Because we are called to love God with our everything.
[00:15:36] You hear this every week because we believe it and we emphasize it. But here at Emmanuel Fellowship we say that as Christ pours into us, Christ pours out of us.
[00:15:48] But that isn't just a one way relationship.
[00:15:52] It isn't just that Christ pours into us. This is a two way relationship. We were created to respond to his love and love him in return.
[00:16:06] As important as this is, I think it is important for us to take some time to think and to reflect on the Shema, on this greatest command of God. But as Christians this is probably not new to us.
[00:16:22] I think we probably know that our purpose is to love God.
[00:16:26] So let's continue. I think there's more here for us.
[00:16:30] Lets Continue. In verses 6 through 9 it says, these words that I'm giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates.
[00:16:52] So Moses emphasizes to the people how important this is.
[00:16:57] And he gives them some steps that they need to take to make sure that they never forget this.
[00:17:02] These are pretty intense.
[00:17:04] He says constantly talk about them in your house, on the road, in the morning, when you get up, at night, before you go to bed. He says, put them as a sign on your hands so you see it all the time. Write them on your forehead so as you walk around you constantly see it on each other. He says, put them on the doorposts of your house and on the city gates. He says that this is that important.
[00:17:31] He says, always keep this in front of you. Always keep it on your mind.
[00:17:37] But not only is it important for them to remember themselves, he also says that they need to repeat them to their children.
[00:17:45] Remember, Moses is talking specifically to this next generation, the children of those who failed to keep their part of the covenant. Moses wants this to not just be something that these people follow. He wants them to teach it to further generations that this will not end with this group of people, but that it will continue on.
[00:18:07] He wants them to avoid the sins of their parents and to teach the next generation not to repeat those same sins, but to follow God.
[00:18:16] And this is not just something that Moses is teaching here, but this is an important theme that shows up throughout the Old Testament. Unfortunately, it's mostly negative.
[00:18:27] We see time and time again that the people fail in this.
[00:18:31] Even those who are the most connected to God fail to teach the next generation.
[00:18:37] We have many examples of this. King David, who's called a man after God's own heart. He wrote many of the psalms, songs of love and devotion to God. He's a king who God promised that a descendant of his would sit on the throne forever. But his own son tries to depose and kill him. And within a short generation, the entire nation is corrupt and split apart.
[00:19:01] King David's one of his other sons, Solomon, wrote entire books of scripture.
[00:19:07] By the end of his life King he was completely ignoring this, Ignoring the Shema and worshiping other gods, ignoring the covenant with God. This led to the curses of the covenant activating, causing the kingdom to split into two. And Solomon's son Rehoboam fell completely into evil. He led the entire nation. Not only did he lead the nation to completely split apart, but then the part that he led the nation of Judah, he led them into a worship of other gods.
[00:19:36] So within a short generation from David, the entire kingdom is split. The people are openly in rebellion and sin against God, worshiping other gods. And this is a cycle that we see throughout the Old Testament.
[00:19:49] Even when God sends a prophet and the people repent, they fail to teach the next generation to follow God. So they then fall away and fall into sin and rebellion. At the end of the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says that the best life a person can live is to fear God and keep his commandments.
[00:20:10] Yet even God's people that repent and take this seriously and fear God and keep his commandments, they fail to follow his command to teach those words to their children, leading to them turning away. And we get this cycle that continues this problem of spiritual legacy, that the people do not pass the words on, they do not pass the teachings on, and then their children do not follow. And this cycle continues.
[00:20:41] Thankfully, that cycle is eventually ended Jesus, the promised Messiah arrives.
[00:20:48] Jesus is the descendant of David that God promised would sit on the throne forever. And Jesus gives us a new covenant. He fulfills that old covenant that the people continued to be unable to follow. And he gives us a new covenant with one that isn't based on both parties having to do things in order for those blessings to apply. Instead, he fulfills both sides of the covenant. He both makes the promises and fulfills our side.
[00:21:15] Jesus becomes a human for us. He lives a righteous life for us. And then he dies the death that our sin deserved so that we could be restored to relationship with Him. All so that we could get back to being able to follow the Shema, to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our strength.
[00:21:38] While Jesus may have fulfilled the old covenant and given us this new covenant, the principles and the reasons behind that old covenant are still there. The Shema is still important for us. It's something that we are still called to do.
[00:21:53] God still wants a people that are his own possession.
[00:21:57] God still created us to be in relationship with Him. He's establishing a kingdom that is meant to be bigger than any one of us. A kingdom that is meant to continue on and never end with Jesus on the throne.
[00:22:13] So one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that if that kingdom is going to continue on, we cannot repeat the sins of they who went before us, who failed to teach and pass on the things that we are told.
[00:22:30] Jesus still cares about us teaching the next generation.
[00:22:36] Not only that, but we see Jesus prove his heart for the next generation.
[00:22:41] Multiple times throughout his life. Notably in Mark 10, we see this little interaction with his disciples. It says people were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them. But the disciples rebuked them.
[00:22:54] When Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, let the little children come to me. Don't stop them. Because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
[00:23:03] Truly, I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. After taking them in his arms, he laid his hands on them and blessed them.
[00:23:14] You see, in Jesus time, children this next generation were viewed as a nuisance. They were viewed as property. They were supposed to be quiet, not to be heard. Just get away and do what you're supposed to do. Learn and be quiet.
[00:23:31] The disciples saw these children trying to come to Jesus and they believed that they would be a nuisance. They didn't want Jesus to waste his time on them. They didn't want these kids to bother Jesus. But Jesus completely upends this. He tells them that not only are these kids of extreme value, but he says that the actual, the kingdom belongs to these children.
[00:23:53] And that not only that, he tells these disciples that they themselves need to be more like children.
[00:24:00] Jesus viewed children as incredibly important.
[00:24:04] I think we see throughout Scripture that God views children as incredibly important. He has a heart for children. But it also shows that Jesus is building a kingdom. He's building a kingdom that does not just rely on those of us sitting in this room, but he's building a kingdom that relies on next generations, on the new people coming into it.
[00:24:32] At the end of Jesus's time here on earth. In Matthew 28, we get the Great Commission. I'm sure we're all familiar with this passage.
[00:24:40] Jesus came near and said to them, all authority has been given to me on heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything. I have commanded you and remember, I am with you always. To the end of the age, Jesus commissions his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. This is both evangelism and discipleship, mission and discipleship.
[00:25:08] Both of these are key elements to the growth of Jesus kingdom. And both are important for us to care about and to focus on.
[00:25:17] We return back to our core mission statement.
[00:25:20] It's this statement, we say, of overflow ministry. As Christ pours into us. Christ pours out of us. It's because of Jesus love pouring into us and overflowing out of us that the kingdom will continue.
[00:25:36] Not only that, but it's because of Jesus love pouring into us that we can love him in return. And his love can pour out of us to love others.
[00:25:45] Because of Jesus love, we can actually fulfill the Shema. We can love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul and strength as he loves us and it overflows out of us and we love him in return. Our love for him is supposed to look like something. And what Jesus says is our love for him is supposed to look like this. Mission and discipleship.
[00:26:13] After Jesus referred back to the Shema as the greatest commandment, he said the second greatest commandment, which is like the first, is to love our neighbor as ourself.
[00:26:22] God's love never terminates on us. God's love always is meant to pour out of us into others. God has a kingdom mindset. He's Building something that is larger than just terminating on us. And we are called to take part in what he's doing.
[00:26:40] It's the pattern of God's kingdom, that his love flows into us and through us into others.
[00:26:47] We're called to discipleship and mission.
[00:26:52] We aren't all called to be like the Hargers and go to a foreign mission field.
[00:26:57] We can support missionaries, and many of us hopefully will go at some point in our lives, but we're not all called to that.
[00:27:06] But we are all called to mission and discipleship here in our context.
[00:27:14] And God wants us to care about building his kingdom, to care about the next generation.
[00:27:20] I know this has kind of been a long and meandering path to get here, but I really feel like this is what God wants for us. As we look back at the work that our church and us individually have done this year, and as we look forward in the next year on what we can do, do, I think we are called to think about the next generation, to think about kingdom work, to think about discipleship.
[00:27:46] There's a company called Gallup that does polling, and over the last decade, their polls have shown a sharp decline in church attendance and church membership in our country.
[00:27:58] Their polling has shown that each successive generation has less and less interest in religion and attending a church.
[00:28:07] We live in a very similar time and place to these ancient Israelites, where the next generations are showing less and less interest in God than previous generations.
[00:28:18] I think that if we're believers, we can look at our country and see that that's true. People have less and less interest in religion and are more and more hostile to Jesus. But Jesus calls us to not just sit back and let that happen. He gives us a job, and that's to teach the next generations about JEs.
[00:28:39] In the new Testament, we see a wonderful example of this intergenerational discipleship at work.
[00:28:46] We see Timothy, who's a young man from Lystra in Asia Minor, and his grandmother and mother were Jewish believers. They disciple him from his youth, teaching him about Jesus. And then when Paul comes through town, he's impressed by Timothy and he takes him under his wing, continuing his discipleship.
[00:29:05] Eventually, Timothy went on to pastor the church in Ephesus, one of the most important Christian churches in the first century.
[00:29:13] It may seem like a small thing to teach children, but for these women, Timothy's mother Eunice, and his grandmother Lois, their discipleship of Timothy as a child had a massive spiritual legacy that continued on through him and on to who knows how many people, through discipleship this is the incredible thing about Christian discipleship. Each and every one of us who are believers can look back at someone else who discipled us, someone who poured into us. And that legacy stretches on and on and on, all the way back to Jesus himself in the book of Titus, who is another disciple of Paul. And in other places in Scripture, we see this model that God forms for his new kingdom. And that model is of older men and older women teaching and training young, younger men and younger women in how to live their lives, how to follow Jesus, and how to grow into godly, mature Christians who then can continue the cycle and pass that knowledge on to younger people.
[00:30:20] Just like Yunus and Lois left this massive gospel legacy behind them, we can do the same.
[00:30:26] Each and every one of us has the opportunity to disciple the younger generations to help to stop this decline we see in our country of the generations falling away.
[00:30:38] And it's incredibly easy.
[00:30:40] I know children's ministry at church is sometimes seen as babysitting. The kids are loud, they can be crazy. It takes away from our church time.
[00:30:49] But each and every one of those kids down there is a young person of the next generation who needs to experience and hear about the love of Christ.
[00:31:00] Each and every week down there, those kids are absorbing the love of Christ from their teachers and the knowledge that they are gaining about Jesus from them.
[00:31:11] And we need help.
[00:31:13] You can step in, you can take a part down there. We need help in our children's ministry. That's not the only way to leave a spiritual legacy. But I think it's important for us as a church to. To think about and care about these kids who are a mission group right here in our church, people who do not know Christ and need to know Him.
[00:31:38] There are other ways that we can think about the next generation, other ways that we can think about leaving a spiritual legacy.
[00:31:46] Look around the room.
[00:31:48] I guarantee you that unless you are, let's see, probably my daughter Claire, you have someone else in this room that is younger than you.
[00:32:01] I haven't once talked about parents discipling their kids, because the parents in our church are already discipling their kids. But it's important for us to think about younger people and how we can pour into them and pass the love of Christ on.
[00:32:21] I think for me, and I hope for many of us in this room, this is really the application today. What kind of spiritual legacy will we leave behind?
[00:32:31] Mission is important, and it's equally important for us to focus on discipleship, on bringing the love of Jesus to our own community. To the people already around us and especially to the young people who are in our context.
[00:32:45] We're not all called to be missionaries to foreign countries, but we are all called to be missionaries in the community we live in and the people that God has already put in our lives.
[00:32:55] We're called to disciple those less mature in their faith, which is often the younger people.
[00:33:02] Just this year, another company called Barna published a new set of polling data that shows that younger adults, millennials and Gen Z are now some of the most regular church attenders.
[00:33:13] Young people are coming to church, they want to be poured into. They want to experience the love of Christ.
[00:33:20] So let's be people who care about that. Let's be people who care about the next generations who don't want to see that the kingdom falls away because we focus on God ourselves and ignore the young people around us.
[00:33:36] Hopefully for some of you, this means serving in the kids ministry, because we need your help.
[00:33:43] But for all of us, we need to think about discipleship. We need to think about people around us that are younger and who can. Who we can pour into.
[00:33:54] So let's take a few minutes. We're going. Ben, you can go ahead and come on back up.
[00:33:59] We're going to spend just a couple of minutes in reflection, and I'd really like to ask you to ask yourself to reflect on this year and to think about next year and ask yourself, what kind of a spiritual legacy am I leaving behind?
[00:34:13] Am I pouring into those around me? Am I focusing on discipleship, seeking out younger people and trying to bring the love of Jesus to them?
[00:34:24] Or if not, how can I make a change in the new year? How can I look around me and find someone younger and pour into them?
[00:34:33] We're going to spend a couple of minutes just in quiet reflection, and then when you're done, you can come up, if you're a believer and take communion. Communion. We talk about this every week. Communion is a tangible, physical way that Christ gave us. As he gathered his closest friends and family together near the end, before he was arrested and killed, he gathered them together and he said, I wanted to. I eagerly wanted to share this meal with you.
[00:35:02] This is him setting up this new covenant that we talked about.
[00:35:08] Jesus fulfills the old covenant and he sets up this new covenant. He gives them the bread, he passes it around. He says, this is my body broken for you.
[00:35:18] And then he gives them the wine or the juice, and he passes it around and he says, this represents my blood, which is poured out for you to establish a new covenant. Of grace.
[00:35:30] So spend a few moments in quiet reflection, and then when you're ready, come up and take communion.
