Nourishment Of Many Kinds

Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

—Romans 12:13

One February, my friend Kelly and I decided to have a party because life felt sort of snowy and dim and the bad kind of quiet. I proposed Italian food—warm, heavily flavored, comforting, sprawled out over a table, unfussy. Melissa from my book club made fantastic Italian hummus, and Kelly and Lacey brought bread and cheese and wine. The table was gorgeous and full—pastas and risotto and salads and roasted asparagus with garlic aioli. We told stories and passed bowls and laughed at Julie’s punch lines. After dinner, we sat around the coffee table eating Stefany’s flourless chocolate cake with crème anglaise and champagne, little clusters of conversations, occasional bubbles of laughter in the dim light.

We asked them to bring money, whatever amount felt right, for the church in our neighborhood that feeds people from a truck a few times a month. I put my little red tomato pot next to the wine and glasses, and at the end of the night it was full. It felt right to think about other people’s hunger as we were thinking about our own—hunger for food and for friendship, for nourishment of many kinds.