Sacred Meals

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

—Acts 2:42

When you eat, I want you to think of God, of the holiness of hands that feed us, of the provision we are given every time we eat. When you eat bread and you drink wine, I want you to think about the body and the blood every time, not just when the bread and wine show up in church, but when they show up anywhere—on a picnic table or a hardwood floor or a beach.

Some of my most sacred meals have been eaten out of travel mugs on camping trips or on benches on the street in Europe. Many of them have been at our own table or around our coffee table, leaning back against the couch. They’ve been high food and low food, fresh and frozen, extravagant and right out of the pizza box. It’s about the table, and about all the other places we find ourselves eating. It’s about a spirit or quality of living that rises up when we offer one another life itself, in the form of dinner or soup or breakfast, or bread and wine.