Listen

They spoke the Lord’s word to him and everyone else in his house. Right then, in the middle of the night, the jailer welcomed them and washed their wounds. He and everyone in his household were immediately baptized. He brought them into his home and gave them a meal. He was overjoyed because he and everyone in his household had come to believe in God.

Acts 16:32-34

Think

Don’t underestimate the power of a hot shower and a homemade meal!

Sometimes, we find God at the mountaintop or in the sanctuary, but sometimes we find God in the everyday acts of life.

I am part of a worshipping community that meets over a meal every time we gather. There is Scripture and song and communion, just like a “regular” service. But there is also conversation among strangers over a candlelit table with big bowls of lentil stew and the broken bread and the blessed cup.

We believe that in sharing a meal together, we open the space for God to enter between and among us — that’s as true at the dinner table as it is at the Lord’s table.

Because of the jailer’s acts of hospitality, and because Paul and Silas received that hospitality, God was present in that house and changed the hearts of an entire household. In something as ordinary as a shared meal, the sacred is present.

How might that change our own understanding of “breaking bread”?

Sarah McCaslin

Pray

God, open my eyes that I may see the ways you enter my life in the simplest gestures of hospitality to friend and stranger, both. Amen.

Go

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

St. Patrick’s Breastplate (390-461 AD)