Cheap Talk and Fast Food

"And on those evenings when the mood is right and the family lingers, caught up in an idea or an argument explored in a shared safe place where no one is stupid or shy or ashamed..."Nancy Gibbs

The dinner table is something I absolutely love. It's where big announcements are made and futures are planned, thoughts are shared and hearts are sewn together. In a time when, as Nancy Gibbs said in her Time Magazine article, "food is fast and talk is cheap", an hour or so each evening when a family sits down, puts away the cares of the world and just enjoys each others company can be a bacon of sanity. I know no matter how rough my day has been if I make it to supper, if I crash into my seat there, I've made it. It's all good.
"Close your eyes and picture Family Dinner. June Cleaver is in an apron and pearls, Ward in a sweater and tie. The napkins are linen, the children are scrubbed, steam rises from the green-bean casserole, and even the dog listens intently to what is being said. This is where the tribe comes to transmit wisdom, embed expectations, confess, conspire, forgive, repair. The idealized version is as close to a regular worship service, with its litanies and lessons and blessings, as a family gets outside a sanctuary. " Nancy Gibbs

Ms. Gibbs could not have been more accurate! Dinner time is very much like an act of worship. We come individually to the table, where we join other believers, not only brothers and sisters by blood but in Him! The Father prays. This is where we come to God, each confessing their sins from the day and asking Him to forgive us and bless our food.

We don't give thanks (pray) before we eat because God needs our gratitude, we stop to acknowledge that God is good, that all good things come from Him and through that we realize, yet again, that we need Him.

Then, as we do every Sunday on a much larger scale, we break bread and feast together.

Above all dinnertime, time around the table, should be a joyful time. A time where funny stories and laughs are shared and kindness just swells up inside everyone.

Every meal doesn't have to be a feast, "Better is a meal of herbs where love is than a fatted calf with hatred." Prov. 15:17, where there is love and grace, there will be people, happy people.

All great change in America begins at the dinner table."

Ronald Regan

Go, eat your bread with joy,

and drink your wine with a merry heart...

Eccl. 9:7