Eating and God

I love the Food Network. There is something wonderful about watching people who love food create these wonderful dishes and share their love with us through the screen. Then being able to go online and try them myself is one of those small precious gifts that make life full. To be in the kitchen and taking all the various ingredients and mixing them together, adjusting the amounts to suit the tastes of the people who are going to be eating it is one of the most relaxing ways to spend an afternoon. It's like being on a mini retreat, connecting back to the basics of life: family, friends, food and God; after-all, he's the one who created all the ingredients and placed all their potential in them so that if you put them all together the right way, you can bring a smile of pleasure to almost anyone's face. You meet God in the washing, the cutting and mixing as you notice the different textures, the colours, the smells and aromas of the food. I imagine God smiling as he was creating the various plants, structuring their textures, giving them their colours, and putting into each plant the potential of how they will interact with other plants, whether flowers, roots, stalks, leaves or even bark to create new and unique tastes that the people still to be created with discover through experimentation and imagination.
I love cooking for others and then sitting back and watching them enjoy the food. As a church we gather together regularly to eat with each other in pot-lucks where we are able to cook for each other and then sit together and share what we've brought while being able to eat some of the love that others have brought. Now I will be honest and confess that dessert is my favourite course of the pot-luck, though I do need to exercise some strict discipline on myself as I approach the tempting offerings on the table.
Food is a powerful way of drawing people together. Last night my wife and I had the great blessing of being invited out by good friends to join them at a small neighbourhood restaurant with a small jazz band. There is something special about eating together, about sharing food, even in being gently forced to eat a piece of baklava I was trying to exercise discipline in not eating, though I must admit I did not put up much of a fight! The conversation flows around the different courses, the words interspersed with the eating and sharing of the food. There is a great deal of sharing and caring and joy that happens in these conversations. This morning, as I thought about the joy of last night, I thought about Jesus inviting us to his meal, inviting us to gather around his table to share the food he provides. This meal is also filled with conversation between our host Jesus and us his guests, and I'm appreciating  more and more how this meal shapes our relationship with Jesus and God. It draws us closer to each other and to God as we gather around the table, and the conversation is filled with sharing and caring and joy. There is a lot more that could be said, but the image of going to heaven and joining Jesus at his banquet table is gaining more meaning and becoming more special for me all the time.