Making space.: An Everyday Meal

Sunday Lunch started with a fluttered word in my heart over 2 years ago. A few moms and me – plus their buckets of children. We’d pile 8-12 people in my little 5-seater Mazda and giggle until we could unfold in the churchyard. We worshiped together and then went home to share a prayer and a meal.

Two weeks ago, we loaded up 21 people in my 7-seater Condor and bumped, bounced, and thank-you’d from church to the base for a meal together. I fed what felt like an army of people, and then gathered the family together for a family meeting.

Well, mostly. Kevin and Karabo were building houses with my microwave box. Wandile, Macbeth, and Gift were playing soccer. And there’s a good chance that Pokasi, Milicent and Mangaliso were eating grass.

Just like family... or something.

The week before that, with tears I couldn’t feel and with an expressionless face, I said words I thought I’d never say about my most God-directed, baby-kiss-filled, anticipated day of the week. “Sunday Lunch is not working anymore.”

Their eyes bulged. Their lips pursed. I was at my wit’s end.

I told them I am struggling financially to feed this many; our car is overloaded; I spend 6+ hours cooking before they arrive; and then, with so many little people with very big needs, I never sit down for the entire meal.

I’m maxed out.

Busi said, “It’s ok! Don’t feed us! Just pick us up for church.”

But a thousand thoughts flashed behind her eyes, and she said, “But some of us really need the food.”

It’s true. Out of the 28 people I fed that Sunday, 20 of them didn’t know where their next meal would come from. I love boosting those bodies with as much nutrition as they can absorb - and then dessert!

We took a week off to pray. I needed to hear Him about Sundays and about living my everyday life with and for His Family. Ten Thousand Homes already feeds and cares for children all week long… My Sundays were not designed to be just another feeding program or a childcare center.

The next week, gathered on a picnic blanket with dessert, we read about God’s family and the real purpose of Sunday Lunch.

To devote, to learn, to share, to pray, to praise, to grow. With everybody’s hands in.

Acts 2:42-47

So on that Sunday, my tired hands reached for their sticky hands.

I gave them an out or an in, but not an in-between.

I gave them their Sunday afternoons back and told them I needed mine. I am happy to do Sundays together, but I can't do it on my own anymore. I will buy; I will prepare; I will drive; I will do all that I can do… if it’s about the One who satisfies longer than that one plate of food I set in all those sets of hands. It has to be about doing what God’s family does.

I wondered what the dessert-slurping faces that bear burdens of disease, poverty, homelessness and hunger would say. I promised that if they decided they were out, they wouldn’t go hungry. I would find a way to provide food for them if they were coming for the sole purpose of feeding their children because moms have so many mouths to feed. But this Sunday afternoon time and space was designed to be sacred. It was made to be more.

Every single one of those burdened faces looked straight at mine and committed themselves to a specific way to help. Mama Charity and Busi would serve the food. Ruth and Mama Siyabonga would do the dishes. Esther would clean the yard. Felicia would teach the Word. And they would all come willing to speak about God’s Word every week. They would keep cramming in to the Condor because we’re made to be together… even when it’s really, really close together.

They all wanted a family more than they wanted to eat.

They were in. So am I. So I had to get real about our family’s capacity and go behind the scenes of our bread breaking. I shared that I cannot feed 30 people meat every week, and, some weeks, I’m not even sure about the beans. Other weeks, I just don’t have the prep time.

They sat on that picnic blanket and took up their Sunday afternoons in a personal, practical way - like a real family - instead of like guests waiting to be served.

One of the mothers there is learning to live with a new, life-altering diagnosis and has a son whose prematurely toothless smile and distended stomach tell a story of trauma and malnutrition. She didn’t miss a beat on that blanket. She looked at me and said, “When there’s not enough, we just use what we have. We’re family. We do what we can.”

And burdened faces beamed.

Weighted shoulders and spirits soared with satisfaction.

“YES!” They delighted.

Right then and there, we started laughing and making plans together. The next week we’d have a traditional South African meal for the first time because they were going to put their hands in. They would teach me how to make the pap, and I’d use the traditional spices and seasonings for the kind of beans they eat with it. The kind of beans that I cannot pronounce - They laugh every time I try to say it.

The orphan mindset in this culture instills a starved feeling of being shortchanged when there’s no meat or small portions. Yet this family moment gave each member a voice and asked for a hand when there just wasn’t enough. Suddenly, I sat on a blanket with a family full pride and overflowing joy over a small, everyday meal.

Maybe that’s why Jesus put the bread back in the disciples’ hands when it was time to feed the 5,000. Their starved state of mind demanded the Holy of Holies meet that moment’s need. Instead, the Son of Man asked them for what they had, and they were invited into a miracle of an everyday meal. It only required a little bit of breaking and the family’s hands serving together.

Can you envision the contagious happiness when a mountainside of people sat with hands and stomachs full?

Can you fathom what the disciples felt like while their family hands gathered baskets of leftovers?

Can you imagine the after-glow and shock of that miraculous everyday meal – when heaven was unleashed from the palm of everyday hands? The burden of that Sunday Lunch was not just for that one man on the mountain whose followers had stomped up with their hunger, fear, burdened faces, and capacity to only see and experience that day’s hunger.

The beginning of my pap making lesson

Mama Charity and Busi = resident experts

This is a HARD job. They were already cackling
and demanding photos by this point. It was awesome.

Can you dream of the freedom as the family of Jesus had that same picnic blanket moment we had and realized, “When there’s not enough, we just use what we have. We’re family. We do what we can.”

I can. This Sunday, everybody’s hands got busy to serve an everyday meal. It was nothing fancy. But it was a miracle meal indeed.

And dessert was a HIT.

Thank you, Father, for the freedom of Your Family. Thank you for a Home that makes ordinary life extraordinary and turns everyday meals into extravagant feasts. Thank you for hands and for bread broken in the name of Love that never leaves and has obliterated the orphan cry. Amen.