Usually, quarantine means staying at home. Turns out it also means working, banking, shopping, and cooking at home. Most already had experienced the first three, but some are hung up on that last one.
Actually, many still aren’t cooking at home. There is thawing, opening, nuking, unsealing, and reheating, but much of what happens in that forlorn kitchen isn’t cooking, just meal prep for watching TV.
And surveys show that half of us hate cooking, so it’s easier just to eat out, where the average family spends forty-five percent of its food budget in restaurants or for takeout. Let’s think about this.
Because the quarantine changes how we do many things, it also gives us an opportunity to reflect on why we do them as we do. Rather than mindless gobbling, meals in other times and places were slower paced rituals of loved ones savoring lovingly prepared food.
So maybe we can reconsider meal time, the food supply chain, our nutritional health, our ambivalence towards cooking, and why we eat in such a hurry. Who knows, we may rekindle the desire, discipline and creativity to reacquaint ourselves with the kitchen. And one another.
Ever notice what a large role meals play in the Biblical narrative?
For example: Genesis 18:3-8; Ruth 2:14; Ecclesiastes 9:7; Matthew 9:10-13; Luke 14:12-14; John 12:1, 2; 21:12; Revelation 19:9.
“Father, you are giving us time and opportunity to rethink many aspects of our lives. Can it be that you want to revive our meal times
for your glory and our good? Amen.”