The Feast

This morning I am thinking of chocolate, and who doesn't love a good story laced with delicious things to eat?  

    In the year of 1989-1990 I lived in Norway on a scholarship. The director of the program, Barbara Lysholt Pedersen, amazed me! She could discuss politics with diplomats and heads of state in the daytime, then in the evening, whip up the most delicious Indian Curry dishes with a martini in hand, wearing a silk house-coat and watching the Benny Hill Show with me! I felt smart and valuable (and free to enjoy another's delightful hospitality) in her company, because of the way I was treated. Barbara invited all of the scholarship recipients to the Chocolate factory in Oslo where we were given a private tour. I will never forget elegant Barbara, dressed in a pink suede suit, reaching across a conveyer belt for the broken remnants of a divine chocolate creation. We were indulged like royalty, with no exquisite taste kept from our watering mouths! I ate nothing. Yes, I am sad to say, I tasted nothing because I was dieting! We were given tiny boxes of liquor filled delicacies on our way home. At around midnight, as I sat in my room, I ate the entire contents, even though I don't even like that type of chocolate! In my legalistic mind of self preservation, I had missed the feast! I am sharing this story this morning (again with some of you because it applies to the parable of the great feast!  

    The invitations arrived, but everyone who received one had a valid excuse in their own minds why they could not partake of it. When the messenger returned empty handed, new invitations were sent to the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind (that is spiritually speaking). Trench says, "He calls to his table the spiritually sick, the spiritually needy; while the rich in their own virtues, in their own merits, at once exclude themselves and are excluded by him thence. The people who knew not the law, and whom the Pharisees accounted cursed, the despised and outcasts of the nation, the publicans and sinners, they should enter into the kingdom of God, before the great, the wise, the proud,-before those who said they saw,-before those who thanked God they were not as other men,-before those who counted that they had need of nothing." Did I need chocolate? Well, perhaps that is debatable, but it is clear that I had the most glorious chance to receive something (almost) beyond earthly blessings and I refused it! Today is the day we have to decide our steps, tomorrow is unknown, let's choose chocolate, spiritually speaking! (I think chocolate must be a hint of the feast to come, don't you?)