Door County Pumpkin Spice Coffee is swirling in my cup and a breakfast of bananas and dried cherries is got "winner" written all over it.
This year we are hosting Thanksgiving Dinner for some family members and us. I gave our grandson Dominick a choice, "traditional turkey dinner" or full blown "Italian feast"? He chose the Italian feast. I plan on making meatballs, Italian sausage, rigatoni, and homemade pasta sauce. There will be olive garnishes, bruschetta, and a hot vegetable ( to be determined. I am debating whether or not to serve soup. I really enjoy planning these large meals. I have a special dessert planned and I am sure it will be a hit.
Now much more important than the meal is the fact that some of us can gather to be grateful and enjoy each other's company. It's not the food that is most important but the time spent visiting, conversing, and hopefully laughing. A family meal can be music to a soul and good for what ails you. I thought about this in depth. God gave us food to eat. He made everything that will be on the table. He gifted us with family. It is only natural to gather and enjoy both at a table.
"Tables are one of the most important places of human connection. We’re often most fully alive to life when sharing a meal around a table. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, to find that throughout the Bible God has a way of showing up at tables. In fact, it’s worth noting that at the center of the spiritual lives of God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments, we find a table: the table of Passover and the table of Communion. New Testament scholar N. T. Wright captured something of this sentiment when he wrote, “When Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal.” I’m convinced that one of the most important spiritual disciplines for us to recover in the kind of world in which we live is the discipline of table fellowship. In the fast-paced, tech-saturated, attention-deficit-disordered culture in which we find ourselves, Christians need to recover the art of a slow meal around a table with people we care about. “Table fellowship” doesn’t often make the list of the classical spiritual disciplines. But in the midst of a world that increasingly seems to have lost its way with regard to matters of both food and the soul, Christian spirituality has something important to say about the way that sharing tables nourishes us both physically and spiritually. We need a recovery of the spiritual significance of what we eat, where we eat, and with whom we eat". Barry D Jones.
In a day when we rush too much the table time has in many ways become almost extinct. Matthew 18:20For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
God Bless,
Marty
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