pot luck

One of the challenges of a career in business is eating well. There are often snacks in meetings and birthday treats in the break room. A lot of business is conducted over lunch, and spending time on the road means eating in restaurants. For a guy my age whose metabolism can only handle so many calories, it’s a challenge.

Church isn’t always a lot better. Anything special at a service is celebrated with cookies, bars or a pot luck. 

I used to resent that. Between work and church, losing weight or keeping it off sometimes seems impossible - you can out-eat even the best workout. But this, morning, reading about the early church in Acts 2, I was struck by what it says in verse 42: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

Isn’t it interesting that fellowship and sharing meals is noted alongside learning from the apostles and prayer as focuses of that first congregation? Could it be that when we share the wonderful blessing of good food, we share something more? The time we put into preparing and conversing, when we do it cheerfully and with loving hearts, in some way knits our churches together, it seems.

One of our previous pastors used to say, “Food is fellowship.” I think he was onto something. Maybe our pot lucks are as important to the health of the church as other disciplines.