When I get to heaven, I am going straight to the fast-food section. Not McDonald’s et el., but the bread and gravy and fried meats and donuts, etc; all the food I am not allowed to eat now. I know that it is the stuff of sugar, salt, fat, and every chemical you don’t want to know about, however its one redeeming quality is that it tastes so good. And since it will be heaven, I will not have to concern myself with cardiac arrest.
Trying to get your kids to imagine a time when food was scarce is like taking them to the beach and telling them that the ocean never existed. Like many, as a child I remember Sunday roasts, Christmas, Easter, and weddings as being the only feasting beyond the everyday food (of which I praise God for in my maturity).
The poor of Jesus’ day (and many, many centuries to come) were lucky to have had enough food to stave off the pangs of hunger. Banquets remained the pastime of the elite.
Yes, Jesus attended a wedding, but even that event came up short on supplies. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, being wealthy, would have provided Jesus and his disciples with a dietary upgrade on their visits—though Jesus really only cared for the spiritual diet of all assembled.
The Wedding Banquet of the Son in Matthew 22 is not an illustration of an event beyond the grave. It is in the here-and-now. The church is that wedding feast. The place where the starving soul is nourished by, and in the presence of, the King.
Strangely, given the miserable outcomes of lives stuffed full of worldly food and possessions, it is hard to convince them that Jesus’ table is laid, and the invitations sent. Billions are starving their souls to death.
We must bid them: “Come…to a party like no other!”
John Staiger
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