This contest reminds me of the days when I was working as a church accountant in our church at home church. At the beginning of every year, our church usually organized(and still organising) a 21 day prayer and fasting program, and as a church stafff and also one of the altar ministers, we were expected to lead by example.
The thing is, I was not old enough to be handling ministerial duties when compared to the mature pastors and deacons in the system. I was just a small boy then, trying to match up to the responsibilities of elders.
On one of those days, my body system decided to be taken over by the devil. I woke up with a serious stomach bite, and because it was a fasting day, I ignored the pain and went to work (church) with the stomach bite without eating breakfast or taking any medication.
By afternoon, the stomach pain had become so severe that I could no longer hold it. Meanwhile, I found it very odd and sinful to eat food during fasting, so I continued enduring the pain. At a point, the pain started affecting my brain, and I could no longer calculate properly or balance the money figures I was working on.
I then walked to where we kept the “blood and flesh of Jesus” (Holy Communion) and began to drink the “blood” (black currant). While I was doing this, my boss (the pastor) walked in, and the moment he saw me, he burst into laughter because he already understood what was happening without asking me to explain what's happening.
The laughter was understandable because my boss was also my friend. Most times, we did not behave strictly as church ministers around ourselves; we talked freely, joked, bantered, and laughed about many things.
“Bro, Kingsley, go and find food to eat oooh! If you faint, it is not me you will leave all this work for. Besides, if you die during this fasting, we will continue while you are gone. Or do you not know that there is a place for wisdom?” He said all this with sarcasm and laughter.
However, my heart still saw it as a sin to eat real food after all his wisdom-filled sermons. So I stayed in the room and began to devour the “blood and flesh of Jesus” (black currant and freshly made bread). I used that as lunch, and my stomach was filled. Interestingly, I did not feel guilty, like I had broken the fast, because it was the flesh of Jesus that I ate and the blood of Jesus that I drank... which we don't term as food. Lol
Did I continue the fasting the next day? You already know the answer. 😂
Thanks for reading.