QUALITY TIME WITH
JESUS
Dear friends,
As the busy time of the welcome events has passed, the studying part of the ISEED program starts again. It has been a crazy time, with a very little personal time of reading and sharing with the group, and sitting again all together to discuss a book this morning was what I needed. New people have joined our team and hearing their insights is a way to get to know each other better. The book we started today is called “A meal with Jesus” and it focuses on the centrality of the meals in Jesus’ mission on the earth:
As the busy time of the welcome events has passed, the studying part of the ISEED program starts again. It has been a crazy time, with a very little personal time of reading and sharing with the group, and sitting again all together to discuss a book this morning was what I needed. New people have joined our team and hearing their insights is a way to get to know each other better. The book we started today is called “A meal with Jesus” and it focuses on the centrality of the meals in Jesus’ mission on the earth:
“In Luke’s Gospel
Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal”
Robert Karris
It stood out to me how He gives us a model that we can copy and follow in an easy way, just opening our hearts and homes. Our openness will show acceptance and inclusion.
In a time where we rush for everything, buy microwavable food, eat with people while chatting on WhatsApp with another friend, the key word that Jesus teaches is quality time. Time spent together is effective only if we focus on the people who are with us, just a Jesus used to do. Stop a second and think of that awkward feeling you have when, while driving, see people staring at their phones and walking, not even noticing all the others around. Or think the sadness you experience when you see a nice couple at a restaurant not talking but both focused on their phones.
Jesus loved the people he was spending the last years of his life with so much, that He even put His reputation at stake, being called “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners”. He was (and still is) happy to link His identity to everyone else’s, to yours and mine! He knew that the table is an important place to open up, to share life on life, to become friends, to reconcile.
As a follower of Christ, my main desire is to be like Him, so the new semester resolution will be to start again the weekly dinners, hosting friends and students. The biggest challenge for me will be to conciliate the crazy daily routine with putting all this into practice and I pray that God will give us energy and love to be salt and light!
Robert Karris
It stood out to me how He gives us a model that we can copy and follow in an easy way, just opening our hearts and homes. Our openness will show acceptance and inclusion.
In a time where we rush for everything, buy microwavable food, eat with people while chatting on WhatsApp with another friend, the key word that Jesus teaches is quality time. Time spent together is effective only if we focus on the people who are with us, just a Jesus used to do. Stop a second and think of that awkward feeling you have when, while driving, see people staring at their phones and walking, not even noticing all the others around. Or think the sadness you experience when you see a nice couple at a restaurant not talking but both focused on their phones.
Jesus loved the people he was spending the last years of his life with so much, that He even put His reputation at stake, being called “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners”. He was (and still is) happy to link His identity to everyone else’s, to yours and mine! He knew that the table is an important place to open up, to share life on life, to become friends, to reconcile.
As a follower of Christ, my main desire is to be like Him, so the new semester resolution will be to start again the weekly dinners, hosting friends and students. The biggest challenge for me will be to conciliate the crazy daily routine with putting all this into practice and I pray that God will give us energy and love to be salt and light!
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| Italian meal with homemade pasta and caprese salad (tiramisu' is not in the picture, but was yummy!) |
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