Spiritual Discipline(s)

50. Too busy to eat, pray or love?

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

When we become overwhelmed by the way life can steal our sense of peace, give some thought and prayer to ways you can reign in the overcommitment, and gather nightly as a family around a nutritious meal.  When we are just hanging on all the time, the REAL needs of our souls are ignored, which is the twin necessity for relationship and food.  It is all symptomatic of the SAME problem.

Relationships take time.  How are you doing in your daily relationship with God?  With your spouse?  Kids?  Neighbors?   What about food, both physical AND spiritual?  How’s it going getting healthy food in the lunch boxes and on the dinner table every day?   Are you feeding regularly on God’s Word?  Is your prayer life nutritious?

Don’t beat yourself up.  Instead, think.  Perhaps what are you doing now is just crazy.  Does your battle with the clock rob your family of together time?  Keep you away from church too often? Running through the fast food drive-through out of desperation?

DECIDE.  Begin to PLAN how this COULD all go BETTER if you made even a couple of small changes.  Enlist the family’s help.  Start small and work your way up.  And take pleasure in the results!

Discussion Questions

  1. Who is responsible for the food in your home?
  2. What are some of the food challenges you face on a daily basis?   (e.g., budget limitations, picky eaters, food allergies, wacky schedules).
  3. What are some ways your family meets the disparate food demands of the group?
  4. Who decides what to eat? Where to eat? When to eat?
  5. Where does the food in the house come from?
  6. Who prepares the table, the food, and the menus?
  7. What kind of lunch do family members eat on weekdays?
  8. How often do you eat out? Is eating out usually at a fast food place?
  9. What are your table rules?
  10. How is your lack of time related to your prayer life?  Your love life?  Your family life?  Are these issues really, at heart, just one problem?
  11. Let’s say that being organized is not your strength.  How DOES a family meal happen without good planning?  What could you do differently?
  12. Let’s say you are a hyper-organized agenda maker.  Does your attitude sometimes feel like tyranny to the rest of the family?  Is there a way to plan and be organized without acting like an Army drill sergeant?
  13. Make a table and put each family member’s name in a column across the top.  In the rows, list out meal planning and prep issues that need to occur, and place an X in each column if that issue is age-appropriate.  For example, you may place an X under Joe’s name for helping cut up veggies for lunches, because Joe is 14 and capable of safely using a knife.  You might place an X under Carlie’s name in the table setting row, because she is 6 years old, and this is an age-appropriate practice.  We KNOW you are BUSY, and that it often feels as if doing these things will go faster if you just do them yourself.  But, making a list, and posting it on the fridge can be a reminder that you are actually helping family member contribute to meals in wonderful ways.  Let them develop their talents as they help out!

 

A MEAL PRACTICE TO CONSIDER AND DISCUSS

  1. Set aside four days, on average, per week when every family member is expected to be present for an evening meal. Try to meet at the same time for each meal.

 

Shared Table Blessings posts will be on holiday hiatus until early 2017. Please use this time to enjoy your shared meals at home and with others!  Thanks for reading.

Blessings,

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

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14. A Significant Motif

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

So, we can see that as a custom, the regular, planned, healthy shared meal at home is difficult to accomplish on a consistent basis without someone being intentional about it; the family supper and the church family supper are less common events in these days of compressed and multi-layered schedules.  But, if we consider the shared meal (especially the evening meal) as a practice, in particular a Christian practice, it then has the potential for both common and sacred relationships in the daily lives of believers.  So even though it may often seem like a lost practice, we should at least consider if it is an important practice in need of attention, intention, and restoration; it is time to explore why eating together matters.

People must eat, and every single thing we eat was once a living entity as plant or animal.  So there is always this built-in truth that for us to eat and live, something else must be sacrificed.  It is interesting that Jesus started his ministry not with fortifying food, but a fast.  In Matthew 4 Jesus fasts forty days in the wilderness.  Now, a forty-day fast will leave most humans at death’s door, famished, literally starving.  How fitting that Satan’s first tempting volley is to entice Jesus to eat bread.  While it feels both farcical and predictable that Satan would dare tempt the Bread of Life with earthly bread, we must remember that Satan knew that Jesus was both man and God, and appealed here to Jesus’ human need to eat. But, Jesus responds, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4)[1]

There is a significant motif here that must not be missed.  Where do Christians come together, on a regular basis to be nourished, satisfied, and sustained?  It is at the Table.[2]  At this Table, we eat the bread that is Christ’s body, and drink the cup that is his blood.  Someone has died so we might live.  It is a central Christian practice for believers to share this meal, as it confirms and affirms our identity as God’s people living out our faith in a family of believers. In the early Church, Paul puts it this way: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16 NRSV).  Paul emphasizes the shared nature of Communion.  In a way, it is the family meal for the people of God.

In our sacred meals at church, we live out, again through shared practice, the saving grace of Jesus Christ.  Side by side around this sacred Table we are invited in our hunger to partake, in our wounded-ness to be healed, and in our loneliness to be a welcome part of the Body.  As one Body we look inward to Christ the Word, remember who he is, the sacrifice he became, and the grace with which he’s invited us, and we eat together. As we leave this Table, still side-by-side, we are forgiven, fed, and fortified to look outward beyond the Table, our eyes opened to see Christ in one another, and to take his gospel to a hungry, wounded, and lonely world.  Our shared meal at the Table “is specifically an act by which we are enabled to discern the world, to see and respond in a manner that is consistent with the reign of God.  Our vision for the world is renewed and we are oriented with the will and purposes of God…[it is this] Supper [that should] foster a capacity to see and act with courage, integrity, love, and justice in the world…”[3]

In a curious way, this suggests what should also happen at home. We meet around the common family table to be fed, a shared meal for our physical body, as well as sustenance for our social and familial needs to connect, and also, because for Christian families, to share God’s Word, that is, Christ the Bread of Life, is to grow together as a family in intimacy with God.  This is the true ‘tie that binds’ and strengthens us two and three times a day to do God’s work in a hurting world.  So, in daily meals at home and common meals at church we practice all that it means to consume both our daily bread and God’s Word in one another’s company.  In return, we benefit from all the shared meal has to offer-a safe place to BE- to belong, be heard, be nourished, be affirmed, be forgiven, and be taught.

In short, the table and the Table both share the common elements of a Christian practice: we are invited to partake of what only God can provide.  In gratitude we are nourished and formed into more godly people for work in God’s kingdom.  It is beautifully simple.  At least, it should be.

Let’s Eat!  Together!

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

[1] Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, where Moses reminds Israel of the manna God provided to quell their hunger in the desert that they might know that life depends on every word, in particular the Ten Commandments, that comes from God’s mouth.

[2] For the purposes of this book, Table refers to the sacred meal of the Lord’s Supper, while table connotes the place where any common meal is shared.

[3] Smith, G.T., A Holy Meal: The Lord’s Supper in the Life of the Church, p. 74.

11. What ARE You Sharing with Others?

~ This Side of the River ~ 2 Comments

Instead of moving into the next chapter on the shared meal, I thought it might be a good time for DESSERT: to REVIEW the notion and nature of the Christian practices, and give you some discussion questions to think and pray through.

Christians are in training, actively practicing particular behaviors that lead to a mature faith and Christlike attitude.  Training takes intention-we need to plan it into our hours and days.  It takes submission, obedience, and sacrifice.  More than anything else, our training takes time.  When our life is already too crowded with a full schedule, we must learn to discern where and how our time is being misspent-as individuals and as a family.  We don’t “make time” for the disciplines and practices; only God makes time.  Instead, we shift our attitude and priorities.  We whittle down here, plan better there.  But mostly, we give our time to the Lord and ask him to help us use our waking hours in ways that honor him.

We have seen how our individual attention to the spiritual disciplines and our shared participation in the Christian practices forms us in our faith into the holy living to which we are called.  They strengthen us to live in a world that is not our final home, to share Christ’s gospel with joy, and to serve God and neighbor out of a delighted obedience.  This is a humbling yet energizing way to live one’s life in sacrifice, thanksgiving, and hope.  Not a life that is all about “me” but one that is focused intentionally on the believing community of “we”.

The early Church that formed out of persecution and dispersal in the first century was marked by the things believers had and did in common.  In our hyper-individualized society, it is difficult for us to comprehend the necessity and power of such communal or shared practices.  Those historic Christian practices formed the essence of our shared practices today, particularly those of worship, prayer, and Holy Communion.  Still, other practices, like that of the shared meal among believers, are no longer a regular part of our life in common.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. The thesis of this chapter is that growing in your Christian faith requires sustained practice. List here some individual spiritual disciplines you do now to grow in your faith.  What do you like about each one?  What makes it hard to do them consistently?  What discipline do you NOT do now that you would like to incorporate into your daily walk?  Why?
  1. Discuss the nature of the spiritual disciplines and the Christian practices. How are they alike?  How are they different?
  1. Life often goes too fast, and we begin to feel as if we are running aimlessly on a treadmill going nowhere. How can attention to the disciplines and practices give you a new sense of purpose and direction and peace?
  1. If your life is simply too crazy-busy, take some moments to ask why. List here those things that take up most of your day/week.  Is there anything you and/or your family consistently do that could be put aside?  Done differently?  Ask yourself what you do, then ask yourself what you want, and consider how these answers differ.
  1. Have you ever given much thought to the shared Christian practices? Why is it important that you and your children are present in corporate activities like worship, prayer, Holy Communion, testimony, and confession-forgiveness-reconciliation?  What does it mean if you are routinely absent from these practices (either mentally or in your physical presence)?
  1. The next chapter will discuss the notion and nature of the shared meal as a distinctly Christian practice. Jot down your week’s typical meal patterns/schedule and with whom they are shared.

Please share your thoughts-it helps me as I continue to write the back chapters of this book to get a sense of what you think, what you do vs. what you wish for.  Thanks! You can click on SHARE to send to friends, and write in the Leave a Comment box below.  

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

(featured image credit:  High Tea in China.  K.Richardson. 2016)