As we’ve moved into these days of reflecting about the way food is a part of our spiritual practice, I’ve thought a bit about time as a component of a meaningful meal. Of course, there’s the time to prepare the ingredients of the foods we eat, to say nothing of the time it takes to harvest those ingredients in places far from the shores of our own lives. There’s the time we invest to eat a meal -- not to swallow it whole but to take time to appreciate the food we have and to focus on being present with our meal companions in a way that feels spacious and open. When I think about meaningful meals in my life, a generous sense of time has been an important quality in what made them good.

Time seems an important value to Jesus in meal sharing. In the feeding of the five thousand in Mark 6, Jesus seems to observe time so spaciously. Even as the disciples want to hurry things along and have the crowd disperse to find something to eat for themselves, Jesus invites folks to sit down and stay and sees the moment as a beautiful opportunity for sharing together. Jesus takes the time to bless God for the food that is at hand and for the way that it would nourish all of those hungry lives on the grassy plain. There’s no hurry; there’s just the opportunity to hold good time together.

On this Lenten pathway, I hope that I might take the Spirit’s invitation to practice holding good time with the meals that I am fortunate to eat each day. In prayer, in conversation at table, in an attitude of hospitality and openness, in thanksgiving for God’s provision, may mealtime be marked for us with time that is full of grace.