Please Pass the Bread….of Life!
No holiday elicits nostalgia for me quite like Thanksgiving. I love the tantalizing tastes and savory smells that lace the day; the lively discussion and smiling faces that grace the celebration, and the uncharacteristic slow down that brings the flurry of a normal work week to a halt. As a child, I remember waking up to the smell of homemade pies baking in the oven and counting the hours until we could pile in the car and drive just a few miles north of town to my grandparent’s farm. There, crammed in the tight spaces of my “Mimi’s and Papa’s” modest home, awaited a table set for twenty and a feast fit for a king! While the traditional spread boasted many of my favorite foods, it wasn’t the home-baked dishes that made the day memorable for me, but the faces that flanked the table. The true cornucopia of my girlhood Thanksgiving was not the cone-shaped centerpiece filled with golden gourds and harvest hued squash, but the palette of imperfect people who loved me through every season of my life. There were uncles whose calloused hands folded in thanks for another harvest, aunts whose flour-dusted aprons wiped the tears of tired children, fathers whose strong arms tossed the football in the backyard, and mothers whose easy laughter floated above the clank of dishes and kitchen chatter. It was at that simple Thanksgiving table where uncomplicated lessons of faith and love became real.
While our family would never have passed one of Miss Manners’ exams, I do remember being well aware of an unspoken degree of ‘etiquette’ that reigned over the holiday meal. Despite the loud laughter and spirited storytelling that marked my extended family’s gatherings, even the youngest of children knew that we were to put napkins on laps, chew with mouths closed, and say pleases and thank you’s as often as necessary. And, of course, when the food was served, we were expected to politely pass each dish in an orderly fashion around the table. Perhaps that is why I have never forgotten an unusual lesson that brought God’s truth to life during the Thanksgiving meal of my tenth year.We had just finished praying when my Uncle Terry kindly asked my father to “please pass the bread.” Since my dad was seated at the head of the gathering and my uncle was placed at the opposite end, I fully expected my father to hand the basket of homemade rolls to me so I could pass it down the line towards my waiting uncle. Instead, Dad slyly lifted a roll in his right hand, ginned deviously at Uncle Terry, and sent a chunk of bread sailing through the air past the startled stares of my mother (who wasn’t sure whether to laugh or hide), my grandmother, and a wide-eyed line of tow-headed children. Unruffled, my uncle gracefully received the pass with the eloquence of an old grid iron and nodded a subtle sign of thanks as he bit into the fluffy roll.
“Seek and you shall find,” my uncle added with a satisfied smile as he helped himself to one more piece of bread.
Today, as I piled my own children into the mini van and headed across town to my parent’s home to savor a feast filled with all of my favorite dishes, I thought about the simple lesson my dad taught me long ago when he delivered a roll (and a chunk of truth) across a humble Thanksgiving table. God’s table is always set (Psalm 23:5). There is no need to wait for a holiday, no reason to scan the calendar for a day off. Any time of day or night, I can pull up a chair and ask my Heavenly Father to “please pass the bread.” And when I do, I find that God’s bread is the kind that fills me up even as the craze of life threatens to drain me dry. Unlike the tantalizing rolls from the Thanksgiving table of my youth, the bread of God will never grow dry and crusty. God’s bread comes with an ETERNAL guarantee- you can bet His son’s life on it! And that’s a promise for which I can give THANKS ALL YEAR LONG.
