Bonding
over Food
During the first youth
group of the year, the youth pastor challenged each cell group to come up with
their group goals for the year. Our group of junior and senior high school girls
came up with several but they all revolved around the theme of Bonding over
Food. Is it only teenagers who would consider that this could be a suitable goal
for a Bible Study group to set themselves?
As we brainstormed we saw
how often food is a theme in the Bible, starting from the Garden of Eden and
ending with the wedding feast of the Lamb. Food could be a stumbling block, as
for the old prophet who was told by God not to eat before he arrived home. He
was deceived into disobeying when another prophet fed him in God’s name. (1
Kings 13:1-26) Food could also be a way of celebrating God’s goodness as when
the people of Israel returned from exile and heard the word of the Lord and
were told to eat and drink and celebrate because it was a sacred day to the
Lord. (Nehemiah 8:10)
We turned to our study for
the evening – another food theme. Jesus was teaching and healing in the desert
for three days and at the end of that time he felt sorry for the people because
they had nothing left to eat. (Mark 8:2) Jesus’ disciples had no suggestions to
make. There was obviously no way that they could feed so many; but Jesus
already knew what he would do. He took the seven loaves that they were able to
come up with and gave thanks to God for them.
Why do we give thanks to
God for every meal? There are so many good gifts that God bestows on us each day
so why is it only before food that we stop to give thanks? Thank you Father for
a hot shower on a cold morning. Thank you for warm blankets. Thank you that I
have work. Thank you for freedom to pray to you. Yet it was only for ‘our daily
bread’ that Jesus instructed us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer.
Jesus lived in a time and
a place when for many daily bread was not to be taken for granted. People remembered
to ask for it because they knew that it was only by God’s grace that they ate
regularly and they gave thanks because they truly were thankful that God had provided
it. Jesus reminded them that they had no need to worry about their daily needs ‘what
you shall eat and what you shall drink and what you shall wear because … your
heavenly Father knows that you need them all’. (Matthew 6:31-32)
It was with this
back-story that Jesus gave thanks for the bread, a reminder that it came from
the heavenly Father; and we too, despite being much further removed from hunger
need to know that it is only because of our heavenly Father that we eat our
daily bread.
The meal did not just consist
of bread. Somebody found some fish too and this time as Jesus prayed ‘he
blessed them’. There is an interesting difference in the Greek words used for
what he did with the bread and what he did with the fish. He consecrated the fish,
or asked God’s blessing on them.
And here in this simple
story we make sense of the goal that the junior and senior girls have set
themselves for the year. As we meet together over food we remember that ‘every
good and perfect gift is from above’, and we give thanks to the giver, but we
also consecrate our lives to his service – ‘Bless this food to our use and our
lives in thy service’ – and we do this together, pledging to remind each other that
God is the originator of all good, and to support each other as we commit our
lives to his service.
