There are a few very good meals I will remember for the rest of my life. An Italian feast I enjoyed aboard a cruise ship in the Mediterranean. Chicken quinoa soup prepared over a wood-fed stove in Peru. My dad’s nasi goreng (Indonesian fried rice), prepared the way my oma taught him. Mmm.

But most of the meals I’ve eaten—thousands and thousands of them—have been unremarkable. If you asked me what I ate last Monday, I probably couldn’t tell you (though I can almost assure you I ate tacos on Tuesday!).

While eating is one of life’s great joys, it is also a necessity of life. Food nourishes us. It fuels our bodies. It keeps us alive. And while sometimes we splurge on a fancy meal, it’s more likely that we reach for ingredients that are inexpensive and easy to prepare.

Our food and our faith have much in common. Jesus calls himself the Bread of Life. His body, broken bread, and his Word, our daily bread. As we seek nourishment for our bodies in three square meals a day, we also seek nourishment for our souls in times of corporate worship and personal prayer and the reading of Scripture.

Just as the food industry emphasizes extravagance—evidenced by the programming on the Food Network—evangelical Christianity tends to focus on moments of spiritual ecstasy. We live for packed altar calls, tear-filled prayer meetings and exotic mission trips.

How should we respond when we find worship or the Word perplexing, boring or unappealing?

We come by it honestly enough. We thrive on stories like that of John Wesley’s Aldersgate experience when he “felt his heart strangely warmed” by the Holy Spirit, or the more recent revival at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. I know there is great anticipation as we approach INSPIRE, the territorial conference and congress taking place this June. And while powerful spiritual experiences are a gift when they come, they cannot be the point of Christian spirituality, or we will find ourselves increasingly disillusioned with our everyday spiritual fare.

Even when it seems routine, mundane or even boring—a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, again?—corporate worship, reading the Bible and even saying grace quietly feeds our souls. It nourishes our hearts and gives us faith and hope to endure each new day. If you asked me what Bible verse my devotional was based on last Monday, I probably couldn’t tell you, but it still kept me fed.

We eat even when we don’t want to, even when the meal before us doesn’t excite us, because we know that we need to. Last summer, I contracted COVID-19, the Omicron strain of the virus that often robs its victims of their sense of taste for several days. Eating lost its joy, and yet I continued to chew through my food because I knew my body needed the nutrients to sustain and heal me.

Similarly, there are times when we will approach worship or the Bible and find it equally unpalatable. Sure, there will be sermons we remember, worship songs that speak to our hearts and beloved Bible verses we can recite from memory. But there will also be sermons that leave us unenthused, worship songs that don’t resonate and Bible passages that seem as unappetizing as stale bread, leaving us with more questions than answers.

How should we respond when we find worship or the Word perplexing, boring or unappealing? We keep eating. We receive nourishment. We keep listening, learning and eating our daily bread. We wait on God to give us what we need to sustain us for one more day.

So, give us this day, our daily bread. And help us to receive our nourishment with gratitude, whether it’s warmed up leftovers or gourmet fare, because both are a gift of provision for body and soul.

Captain Laura Van Schaick is the corps officer at Barrhaven Church in Ottawa and the divisional secretary for women’s ministries in the Ontario Division.

Photo: Jiri Hera/stock.Adobe.com

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