Come Hungry!

Have you ever worked really hard preparing a meal for your family and then nobody came? I know mothers of small children cannot identify with this, but those of us with teenagers certainly can. Now don't get me wrong--I am a mediocre chef, at best. Truth be told, I like to cook for two reasons: I want to love my family by cooking them a healthy, tasty dinner that we can enjoy together while having meaningful conversation. Okay, so that never happens--but a girl can dream, can't she? Secondly, I cook because I LOVE to eat! If only my culinary skills matched my prodigious appetite--they'd be asking me to do a pilot on the Food Network. As it is, they might want me on a show aimed at discouraged, mediocre cooks who aspire to be more like Martha Stewart... only without the jail term... or the unappealing perfectionist streak.

I digress. Hope springs eternal, so even with my many strike outs in the family cooking department, I keep trying. It can get pretty frustrating, since inevitably, whatever I cook, someone will not like it. One child, inexplicably doesn't like pasta (truly unbelievable), another won't eat red meat, another doesn't like casseroles or food mixed up with any other food and on and on. But I keep soldiering on, certain that one of these days, I will become such a fabulous cook that they will like whatever I make. HA!

In the meantime (i.e. till I get to heaven), I keep cutting out recipes and working hard to cook a meal everyone will devour. A meal that does not include cereal or mac and cheese or chicken nuggets. And I can't tell you how many times I have labored with extraordinary effort and diligence only to discover at supper time that no one could eat together that night. One child might have a late cross country practice and then a study group; another child planned to go out to dinner with his young life leader (hard to argue with that), another one simply isn't hungry since he ate his friend's leftovers at the golf course. My husband and I look at each other, and he usually gives me the lecture about checking with everyone first before I go to all the trouble and expense of cooking a home cooked meal. As Steve Martin would say, "Well, EXCUSE me!"

If you are a mother of a teenager, then you fully understand me when I say that watching all my loving, hard work go utterly to waste, DRIVES ME CRAZY! There is just something so sad and disappointing about preparing a feast for your loved ones for which they don't show up.

And then it hit me: how often do I do that with my Lord? How often does He have a feast specifically prepared for me in His Word and I am just too busy or too preoccupied with other things to bother showing up for His loving meal? "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!" There are countless references throughout the Scriptures to eating God's Word, to tasting His goodness, to finding satisfaction in Him. Even in heaven, one of the greatest highlights will be the Wedding Feast of the Lamb (and I for one, am pretty fired up about that--I'm thinking the food in heaven will truly be "out of this world!").

God longs for us to come and feast with Him in His Word. He has tasty morsels intended just for us each day--yet how often do we skip a meal, or ruin our appetite by snacking on what the world has to offer? The Lord Jesus knows exactly what we need. He understands our appetites and our weaknesses. He knows just what food will satisfy us, nourish us, fill us up to overflowing with precisely what our needs will be that day. And while we eat His Word, He longs to just enjoy fellowship with us--to listen to us, to talk to us, to encourage us, to strengthen us.

But how often we forfeit this feast prepared by the Master Chef! We rush out the door, because we have so much to do and accomplish--like our busy children with too many activities to have time to eat supper with us--and we miss the spiritual nourishment that will strengthen us and enable us to do all that we have to accomplish. Boy, I would no more skip physical food than fly to the moon. I've never understood those people who say they simply "forgot" to eat. Never, ever, ever happened with this girl! But, I've skipped more than my share of the spiritual meals and those are exceedingly more important, more life-giving, more sustaining than any sandwich or chicken pot pie or chocolate cake. Forgive me Lord!

So what is causing you to skip a meal with the Savior? Is it busyness or preoccupation or maybe a a

loss of appetite. When my son comes in from golf and pours himself a Jethro sized bowl of cereal

right before dinner, he doesn't have much of an appetite for anything I might have cooked. Barbecue

chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans will provide him with far more nutrients and protein

and long term satiation, but when he's hungry, those quick, easy, brightly colored fruit loops look

pretty tempting! We so often look for the quick fix, the easy answer to our worries that a shopping

trip or a drink or a phone call to gossip or a mindless TV program or a computer program might seem more alluring than

time alone in God's Word. But one truly satisfies and strengthens; the other merely camouflages and

covers over for a brief instant.

The choice is ours--God is calling us to come hungry and to be fully, joyfully, abundantly satisfied

in Him and in His Word. Or we can choose to get busy with other things and skip another meal with Him and suffer leanness in our

soul. He's waiting with His feast prepared just for you and for me. Will we go? And to God, the Founder

of the feast, be all the glory.