food

What is it about cooking and eating a meal together that bonds a group of people? That turns acquaintances to friends to family?

The author of Bowling Alone quotes statistics that lament, in summary, the lost of art of “inviting someone over for dinner;” urban individualism spawning web-ordered Chinese eaten in front of digital cable. It’s not just the natural grasp between hot food and community which appears to be lost. Both seemed to fall together.

It’s a sad contrast to an Acts community which “broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.”

It’s not just the Eating that makes a good meal. Yes – maybe my favorite memories of true fellowship in undergrad are sitting with a plate of mediocre pasta and one of my dear friends in the corner of the living room – talking about life. Asking deep questions. But the once-a-month Cooking-and-Cleaning gave me my first semester a tangible way to help, my next: a humbling way to serve, my next: a stepping stone to greater leadership.

What if it's true that preparing and eating meals together is one of the best physical manifestations of the real church?