“Amelia, baby, have you eaten your food?” asks Dana.
Amelia responds through a sheepish grin, “Yyyyyeeeess. I’ve aten some of it.”
Then Amelia goes back to talking with her brother and cousins while the adults smile at one another, knowing good and well that Amelia has barely eaten anything.
“That didn’t sound guilty at all,” chuckled my brother.
“Oh, I know :-).” Dana said. “I figured she wouldn’t eat much. She never does when she’s around the cousins. I thought about barely giving her any food. I guess that’s what I should have done.”
Such was the conversation around my parent’s 50th Anniversary dinner table on Saturday night. And for some reason, my first thought upon hearing this exchange was, “Maybe this is what Jesus meant when he said he was the bread of life.”
Whenever the kids are together, they tend to be so joyous that they don’t really need food—especially Griffin and Amelia. If there’s food for them to graze, then they’ll fill up on that because they can grab it as they pass by in their play. But when it comes time to sit down for a meal, they usually have so much fun laughing, talking, and just being together that food becomes a secondary need.
I wonder if Jesus meant that that’s what fellowship with him is like. I wonder if Jesus knew that spending time and hanging out with him could fill a person with so much contentment, happiness, and joy that things like desire for food and drink move to the background. I wonder if Jesus was saying that when we come together in his spirit of love and giving that we will never want for anything again…
Maybe not.
But maybe so.
And maybe our meals should always be followed by singing and instrument playing…which is exactly what happened on Saturday night…while a joyous empty-stomached-but-full-hearted-Amelia danced.
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