To the Breaking of Bread and To Prayer

   It's no secret that I have a tendency to binge on computer time.  Look...I'm doing it right now!
   I have all kinds of reasons.  I'm an independent consultant for a home/party-based business that involves lots of time connecting with my team and hostesses through social media and our company's website.  I'm involved with several real-life social groups that happen to post many of our information online.  I'm a writer and blogger.  I'm a mostly stay-at-home mom so I shop, bank, and find our recipes online. I'm not going to pretend that's the worst thing ever.
     In many ways it's improved our lives.  I can now get the "business" done in ten minutes that would've taken me away from my family for hours stuck to a land line telephone fifteen years ago.  I save a few trees running to pinterest to find out how to make crock put marinara instead of flipping through stacks of magazines.  But, recently I've noticed that I leave the computer screen still feeling unsatisfied.   There's nothing wrong with pinterest but clicking on pictures of salted caramel brownies doesn't feed my heart and soul like stirring together some of my Grandma Anna's old-fashion banana bread with my five-year-old.  Typing or reading "Praying for you" helps on hard days when I don't want to show my tear stained face or can't leave the emergency room with my little cancer patient at 2 in the morning.  But it doesn't compete with huddling forehead to forehead with hands clenched in prayer.  And reading blog posts from my favorite Christian writers, while a positive supplement, could compare to  chewing up my grape-flavored Flintstones vitamin and pushing aside the nourishing plate of roasted chicken and wild rice.  I've been nibbling at the chips and salsa but I'm hungry for the main course.  For "the breaking of bread and prayer" and "every word that proceeds from the mouth of God".
    A few weeks ago I tried to make some chicken enchiladas for a lady I'd befriended from one neighborhood over, a single mom from Daniel's bus stop who'd just had a baby.  For one thing I'd been craving the enchiladas and an excuse to eat all of that cheesy yumminess...and you know...good deeds and all that.  I shopped for the ingredients, chopped the green onions and had Dan grill and shred the chicken.  But, when the day I'd planned on came, she still had not returned a single one of my texts, her son had not been back to school yet and I had no idea where she lived.  We think she might have moved in with her sister.  But, we'd also just found out that Dan's Grandma, who'd been hospitalized with the flu earlier that week, had gone back home on hospice care.  And with the cessation of proactive attempts to prolong her life, she wouldn't last very long here on earth.
   As I stood in the kitchen surrounded by cans of cream of chicken and tubs of sour cream, I thought of places in the Bible where it talked about caring for your family.  Because, really, do all the good deeds for random friends and neighbors mean as much if I haven't even first cared for your own family in a time of need?  Don't I feel like I can pat myself on the back more for those things done for strangers when taking care of family just feels like something I'm just supposed to do?  I could hear God telling me that the reason I never heard back from bus stop mom was because our family needed the enchiladas.  A phone call to Dan's mom revealed that her siblings (there's five of them) and much of their family had gathered at their home, just down the street from Grandma's tiny place.  And she was too distraught to even write a shopping list.

Grandma Scott sharing at one of the church services in Colorado

  The nice thing about these enchiladas is that you can just keep adding whatever ingredients you have left until you fill every rectangular shaped pan in the house with rolled tortillas.  Like some sort of feeding of the 5,000 miracle.  By the time I'd added rice, salad and cupcakes to the menu my back ached and my kitchen looked like a tornado hit it.  But it smelled like edible comfort.  We dropped off our enchiladas and then took a turn going down to Grandma Great Scott's little house to say our good-byes.  Words from Grandma were weak and few but before we left she sat up and carefully scooted to the edge of her bed.  She bowed her head and folded her hands as Dan prayed over her and thanked God for the many adventures we'd shared.  Quietly we returned to Dan's parents' house.  I walked in to see paper plates being passed around full of the enchiladas and my heart soared.  I listened to the memories spoken and unspoken of a woman who took such great pleasure in feeding her loved one's hearts and souls with Rainy Day Roast and Bible stories told in her animated reading voice.  The breaking of bread and the reading of the Word.

Hopefully my mom doesn't mind that I included the "melanoma attacked my mom" picture.

    One week later I stood in my kitchen again preparing a meal.  A group of women, also starving for the same things as I, gathered for dinner, prayer and a discussion on "The Story:  The Bible as One Continuing Story of God and His People".

     I'd invited a potluck of women from several different pieces of my life who'd read the blog post I wrote about this goal of reading through this book and had expressed interest in doing the same.  I love this book because I'm reminded again and again that no one writes better stories than God.  And as I hungrily grabbed at all those delicious bites of wisdom, I realized that this realness, where God's Word is shared over cornbread and prayers are written on table covers had been lacking in my diet.

Karin, Dawn and Janice

     And I realized what I truly craved even more than chicken enchiladas was a life like that of the early disciples or Grandma Scott or this sacred gathering of women I admire who devote themselves "to the breaking of bread and to prayer" (Acts 2:42).

To the breaking of bread...and Linda's amazing pies...