CDPunt(igam) Writes

“You’re so cute, I could just eat you up!”
“Don’t eatted me!”
“Oh, but your little cheeks are just too much!”
She smooched his chubby cheeks until they both giggled.
“Don’t eatted me!” he declared again through the laughter. “If you eatted me, den I be all gone.”
“Okay, but what if I just give you a little nibble?” she asked, picking up his foot and opening her mouth wide.
“No eatted!” he squealed. “Eatted dis instead” he thrust his toy giraffe towards her open mouth.
She pretended to take a bite. “Tastes like drool and old apples,” she said. He took the giraffe back, sniffed it, and stuck it in his mouth. “Tastese goos tov me” he mumbled around the toy.
“As good as my book that you tried to eat?” she asked, looking at her Bible on the table.
“Bever,” he said, chewing on the toy.
“Jesus did say that we should eat him, but I don’t think he meant like that,” fingering the gnawed edge.
“I eatted Jebus!” the little boy shouted, reaching for the book again.
“We eatted this with our eyes and our hearts,” she said, pulling the Bible into her lap.
“You eatted with you eyes?” he asked, “and your hearted?” placing his hands on her face.
“I read the words with my eyes so they can be in my heart. That’s how I eatted Jesus.”
“No chew book and no eatted baby?” he asked, picking up the giraffe.
“No chew book, no eatted baby,” she answered, finding a story to read to him.

This short fiction is based on John 6:51-58.

⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

⁵² Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

⁵³ Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷ Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” (NIV)