Tacos as the new fish and loaves...

As the mom of three growing boys, I spend an insane amount of time buying, washing, preparing, serving and cleaning up food.  It often seems a futile task that leaves me wondering what difference this is making in the world?  I’m not finding a cure to cancer or developing a method to deliver clean water to remote villages....here I am, chopping another onion!

Reading about the miracle of the fish and loaves in John chapter 6 has become a huge encouragement.  I think of the boy’s mother packing another lunch in a daze, with the glimmer of hope that her son will be out of the house all day, leaving her with some peace and quiet to do the breakfast dishes, grocery shop and get dinner started.  And yet God uses this Mom’s dull daily task as the starting point for a huge miracle.  The boy finds his way to a hillside where 5000 men (that number doesn’t include women and children) are gathered to hear Jesus teach. Faced with a hungry crowd and no concession stands, Jesus proceeds to pray over the boys simple lunch and direct his disciples to start passing the food.  When all is said and done, the crowd has been fed and 12 baskets of leftover food gathered.  

Maybe our time spent in the kitchen isn’t a waste after all!  Maybe it matters as much as finding a cure to cancer and sources of clean water.  

I have a friend who is walking beside one of her good friends through the unexpected loss of her husband.  It’s heartbreaking, and hard.  We were having coffee this week and she mentioned that in all the chaos she hadn’t been to the grocery store.  I got to experience the miracle of the fish and loaves with my very own refrigerator. Two chicken pot pies turned into three and the problem of her empty cupboards no longer mattered that day.  

As years pass and I add notches to my mothering belt, I’m convinced that tacos are the new fish and loaves.  I can’t even count the number of times we have been playing with friends as dinner time draws near.  We may be counseling each other through a crisis, or having too much fun to end the play and can always throw together a meal of tacos for ten! 

This most recently happened on a March day marked by a blizzard coined the “bomb cyclone”.  School was cancelled, the kids were antsy and begging to play with our good friends.  In our desperation, we dug through cupboards and refrigerators and pooled ingredients for tacos.  Our family braved the three block drive to their house and sanity was saved! These six kids have shared so many meals of tacos that we’ve started joking about serving tacos at their weddings!

So as you’re prepping food for your next meal, be encouraged that God uses food, and the people who prepare it to build relationships, provide comfort, and even work miracles!  Go ahead and mentally award yourself the Noble Prize while you peel those potatoes:-)