Extending the Table

How we can eat and drink to the glory of God this holiday season

It's 10 p.m. and I'm finally feeling grateful for this holiday meal. Mostly that it's over and we've all finally stopped eating. I consider the destruction. The table lies wasted. The candles have dissolved into stalagmites, which I know will never come out of the tablecloth. The staggering amount of leftovers prompt a rehearsal of my food performance: Was the meal good enough? My sweet potato cheesecake with a gingersnap crust was a hit, but the turkey was stringy and the broccoli was so overcooked I should have just whipped it with a beater and served it with the mashed potatoes. And did I really have to eat that second helping of chocolate-pecan pie with a whipped cream bouffant?

During the dinner, as I passed the platters of ham, turkey, and goose, the salads, the baskets of rolls, I thought of the billion people on the planet who labor daily for little, often nothing, on their plates. Here we are so encumbered with abundance, we seldom ask God for "our daily bread," and our most valiant, laudatory labor is pushing food off our plates.

How much guilt can a holiday meal serve up? Apparently as much as an all-you-can-eat buffet. Making for heavy holidays indeed.

A few years ago, burdened by the guilt and expectations of the feasting table, I began to reconsider the whole topic of food. I remembered the admonition from the apostle Paul that we are to "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5, NIV). Have I ever consciously done this—brought my thoughts about food into obedience to Christ? I remembered, too, the familiar passage where Paul is discussing whether believers should eat food sacrificed to idols. He concludes by saying, "So whether you eat or drink [of this food], or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31).

How could I eat and drink to God's glory then? I began studying the Scriptures and found in its pages an astonishing record of food. From the opening pages of Genesis, the whole story of redemption can be told through edibles, from the bite of the fruit leading to the fall, to the Passover meal eaten just before the flight from Egypt, to Jesus coming as the bread of life, his feeding of the multitudes, and finally, Jesus the bread broken for us.

As I've meditated on these and many more passages, I've been working joyfully at recovering a more biblical practice of eating and drinking, which has changed my holiday meals from a smorgasbord of guilt to real worship and celebration. I offer these suggestions as you begin to think about the foods you'll serve and share these coming days. To read more, click here.