Tina Francis, photo
Twinkle lights are strung, shining everywhere I look. Glossy food magazines feature holiday tables bursting with roasted meats, savory sides and sweets galore. Discussions now turn to plans for the coming feast days – who will be around the table, what family recipes will be made, how will the celebration take shape this season.
As a host, I tend to make a long list of ingredients and a shorter list of guests. I want to ensure there’s an abundance of food to satisfy all the appetites around the table. I’ve grown up with the fear most of us fight when planning for the holiday – running out of anything. So I’ve learned to over-compensate, buying more to guarantee everyone will have their fill of food, drink, truffles and Burundian coffee. I’m imagining a buffet over-flowing with good food, plates piled high, everyone enjoying more than one dessert and emptying out the candy dish.
While reading Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, I came across this gem: “The opposite of scarcity is enough…” I usually think the opposite of scarcity is abundance, more, not fasting but feasting. Yet I intuitively knew she was right. And while she wasn’t talking about meal preparations, I couldn’t shake the connection of this idea to my concept of feasting.
We read about food often in the Biblical story – fruit in the Garden of Eden, the melons of Egypt, super-sized grapes in Canaan, milk and honey in the Promised Land, water into wine by Jesus’ own hand, His frequent meals with all manner of people and the anticipated marriage feast highlighted in Revelation. The images are plentiful. When I think of the final meal, the heavenly banquet, I see a table stretching into eternity brimming with copious amounts of the earth’s most prized bounty and delicacies.
But the more I reflect on the texts that have nourished me in recent years, a new pattern emerges. Feasting isn’t about super-abundance for select guests; it’s about enough for everyone.
Read the rest over at SheLoves Magazine today. (All month we are reflecting on the theme of Feast, so while you’re there, click on some of the other great posts related to feasting!)
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