Present

What are you doing in the present?  I don’t mean today; right now, this very moment.  Where is your head resting?  Is your heart in a different place?  Does peace flood your heart?
 
When I think of the special people, those who metaphorically nurture and hold my soul up towards Divinity, I always think of times we have shared a meal together.  It isn’t that I am obsessed with food.  Rather it is a heart memory so embedded in the fibers of my being that I am who I am partially because of the experience.  It is almost as if I could reverse the sequence and index the people who have touched my life by the food we shared and will share again.
 
The list keeps growing.  There is gluten, the life cycle of making though eating this comfort food; ah, great memories and the knowledge I am loved.  Experiments in how to cook the world’s hottest chili; experience demonstrating I am accepted just as I am.  Introductions to new foods including a breakfast dish called “roll them up and cut-em”; first hand reminders of what it is like to be part of a family.  Because of the gifts I have received I can imagine the perfect tuna-steak.  With the image comes the knowledge that as good as this is, friendship is even better! 
 
I find myself, even as I write, walking through hallways of memories, jumping from city to city, across cuisines, and yet there is a constant; friends, relationships, and knowing the truest values in life.  My experience isn’t new.  Even in days past, “Lazarus and his sisters invited Jesus to dinner at their home.  Martha served.  Lazarus was one of those sitting at the table with them.”  (John 12.2)  They knew the invitation was an opportunity to give birth to new memories which would touch their lives and others for years to come.
 
My thought this morning is of the hunger that will come during the course of the day.  Each is an opportunity to break bread, create memories, and discover life itself.