We All Need to Eat

Hopefully you had a good Thanksgiving.  Wonderful, glorious Thanksgiving.  A time to indulge in all those delicious family recipes reserved specifically for one day a year.  The turkey.  The stuffing.  The cranberry sauce.  The pumpkin pie. It’s also a time to gather with loved ones (with some being easier to love than others) and reflect on that which we are thankful.  As I look back over the past year and list the blessings around me, there is one thing I am particularly thankful for—we all need to eat.That may seem odd, so let me explain.  In order to survive our bodies need food.  Eating is a simple, fundamental need.  If we overlook this simple need, our health will suffer.  We will not function at our optimal level.  Neglecting this one simple need can have long-lasting effects.  In our children’s ministry, I’ve realized the importance and value of simplicity.  To focus on the basics by reminding myself that, just like the rest of us, our children need Jesus.  When coming to church they don’t need neon signs at our entrance.  They don’t need fancy, state of the art playgrounds.  They don’t need monthly carnivals that add to an already busy family schedule.  They need to hear the words of Jesus.  They need adults who will invest in their spiritual development.  They need Christian friends that will give them love and encouragement when the world knocks them down.  That is why we read our Bibles, we pray for each other, and we get to know one another.  We have family dinner nights because we all need to eat, so why not eat together?  We open our church doors to the families in our community during outreach events to simply share God’s love and hospitality.  It isn’t complicated—we keep it simple.  Over the last few weeks, our children have been learning about the early church in the book of Acts.  We’ve talked about God sending His Holy Spirit to guide us, and how the early church learned together, prayed together, and ate together:“And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.”  Acts 2:46The early church focused on God.  They kept it simple by being generous and thankful, and they grew in number each day.I’m thankful we all need to eat.  And I’m thankful for a faith community that eats together, prays together, and praises God together.  In a world of busyness, stress, and complication, imagine if we concentrated on the simple—if each day we found one simple thing to do for someone else—held a door, said please and thank-you, smiled at a stranger, gave a complement.  Don’t underestimate or limit what God can do with a single act of kindness.  We remind ourselves we all need to eat, then trust God to take our simple acts and make them extraordinary.