Friday, August 23, 2013

Meals after summer

One of the things I’m looking forward to the most when I arrive home is sharing meals with friends.  Every time I come home from my adventures, I share meals provided by my friends or we meet at local restaurants and chow down.  I’m pretty sure it’s a foretaste of what heaven might be like. 

It will have been 3 months since I’ve seen most of my church friends and I can’t wait to see them again.  We share so much joy over what has happened in the past three months.  Most of them don’t travel as extensively as I do but most of them are blessed enough to get away for at least a weekend or at least send their child to a camp of some sort.  Summers sure are great, aren’t they?

One of the best ways to get to know someone is to share a meal with them.  The classic date in American culture has been ‘dinner and a movie’ for how many decades now?  Lately, it seems the movie part of that equation is becoming less and less prominent but dinner remains.  Before I started dating Steffani, I had dated a couple girls last fall.  I quickly realized I was going to need a new approach rather than dinner so I quickly changed to wanting to get coffee or dessert.  This was obviously due to my cheapness which I would be wrong if I were to try and deny that.  Come on though, what girl doesn’t like dessert, right?

When a new person comes to church, we’re encouraged to take them to lunch; it’s kind of a running joke at the Creek.  If someone brought you to our church, that person owes you lunch.  The idea is to encourage dialogue about what the preacher taught on that morning. 

Whenever I have dinner with any friend, I always cherish that time together.  Very rarely do I leave feeling unsatisfied, either physically, emotionally or spiritually.  Every part of me is nourished, and it is beautiful.


Perhaps that’s why one of the last scenes we’re shown in the Biblical account of Jesus on the earth is that of the Last Supper.  It is an intimate setting with his disciples.  He offers the bread and juice and tells His disciples that they are His body and blood and to take this meal in remembrance of Him.  It’s one thing to do it on Sunday morning in a church; but it is also emulated in other meals I have with fellow believers.  We may not assess our hearts, but we do generally pray and give thanks for the food that God has so graciously provided.  We then proceed to enjoy one another’s company.  It’s a beautiful thing, really, to see what God has done in each of our lives over the past 2 or 3 months depending on how long I have been gone.

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