Church is a Banquet - by Laura Duke

I've been thinking about how we live in a time and place of incredible abundance. We have easy access to food and consume more food than any culture or society before us I would imagine, yet at the same time we are on the whole probably less physically active than people were in other times and places. 

Food was designed to fuel our bodies for the activities of life, so often we consume far more than we put to good use. 

I think this is reflected in our spiritual lives. In Matthew 4, Jesus refers to a connection between food and God's word:

“It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’"

We have access to a huge amount of Bible teaching and resources to guide our spiritual growth and development, but I wonder if we are also becoming spiritually lazy? We consume many spiritual 'calories' but perhaps struggle to put them to good use? 
 

While meditating on this thought, I pictured a huge table laden with indulgent food; a banquet with people gorging themselves with food. Sounds pretty good, right? What will they do afterwards? 
 

Church is a banquet, a smorgasbord of God's word. We feast together spiritually on a Sunday morning and have access to much much more during the week if we seek it. 

What do we do with all of the nourishing energy from those spiritual meals? 
 

Lord, thank you for your abundant provision for us. May we learn to honour you in how we put our spiritual meals to use in the way we live our lives. Guide us and teach us we pray, Amen.