Christmas is a week away and I am looking forward to all the wonderful food. I am definitely more of a Christmas ham fan than a Thanksgiving turkey fan. Give me some ham, mashed potatoes & gravy, some veggies, deviled eggs, 7 layered salad, and mac and cheese…ok so you can tell I like my carbs.

Now, imagine you had all that food plus some biscuits, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, peppermint bark, egg nog, maybe some pecan and pumpkin pie, and someone in your family responded, “Ugh, there is nothing good to eat.” If you were in my family I am sure heads would be quickly snapping to see who was going to slap them in the back of the head first.

This reminds me of the other day when my youngest was hungry and I provided lunch for him, but he resisted because it wasn’t the exact thing he wanted to eat at the time (even though the food I provided is something he usually eats with no issues). He is 4 years old so anyone who has/had little ones, and been around them for any length of time knows the smallest things can set them off. It could be that you cut their sandwich the wrong way, you gave them their drink in the red cup instead of the blue cup, or you made their soup warm instead of letting them drink it straight from the can. While my son is stubborn, I can be pretty stubborn myself and I told him, “This is what is for lunch, I know you like it, so if you don’t want to eat it then you will have to wait for dinner.” Of course, he used the normal 4-year-old tactics of asking for things repeatedly or asking for the thing he said he wanted earlier like I must have misunderstood his demands.

He did hold out a couple of hours but then eventually he ate some of the food I had provided for him. When my wife got home from work I shared what he did and I said something to the effect of, “It was not that he was hungry and I did not provide him with food, it was that food was provided and available in front of him and he rejected it.”

This reminded me of something that author/clergy/friend Sue Nilson Kibbey said in her book “Floodgates”, when she said, “We get to choose-will I starve the life of Christ in me, or feed it? Is your church simply snacking on prayer, or feasting on prayer?” Just like at the holidays we can be tempted to just graze on the appetizers and then when the main course is ready we may not be hungry, we can view prayer (both individually and corporately) as something to pick at and just take a small nibble. While the nibbles can fill us for awhile our bodies are going to want something more substantial. For example, my youngest son would probably choose cookies and chips over food that is better for him, and while it may fill him for a moment it is not going to give him the nourishment he needs.

So, with our lives and the Church, we need to move past the occasional nibble of prayer during a worship service, or when we want God to help us out of a jam in our lives, and start feasting on prayer. To view prayer as that which guides us sustains us and nourishes our souls. Friends, I believe when we make this shift it makes our lives healthier and our churches healthier. Christ has made the feast available, the choice is whether or not we will eat.