Meaningful Meals

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:25-26)

Throughout the three years of Jesus’s public ministry, we see mealtimes playing an important role.  There is the feeding of the five thousand with just a few barley loaves and fish (John 6:1-15).  And a similar feeding of four thousand in the Gentile region of the Decapolis (Mark 8:1-13).  Here Jesus is miraculously illustrating a principle He has been trying to teach—That people can trust God to provide for their needs.

Jesus teaches a different lesson by sitting down to eat with sinners.  Scripture records Him having dinner in the homes of at least two tax collectors—Matthew and Zaccheus.  By sharing a meal, Jesus is symbolically entering into relationship with two men most Jewish people would have completely avoided.

Yet, I think it could be argued that Jesus’s most meaningful meals were actually the ordinary, everyday ones He shared with His disciples.  As they traveled from place to place, their campfire meals surely would have taken on a family-like atmosphere. There would have been all of the joking, arguing, and rivalry you’d expect among siblings, along with the occasional deep conversation and transformational moment that can only happen in the context of being intimately known and loved.

Meditation

Imagine you had the chance to eat a meal with Jesus today, what would you like to talk with Him about over the meal?