Come and feast!

God’s love and compassion calls us to have more than a taste of his love, blessing and provision - Chris Cartwright

I remember the first time Annie and I encountered the joy and temptation of an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet on a family visit to Florida when our children were small. For one basic entry price, customers were invited, or perhaps enticed, to eat breakfast from around the world. Familiar favourites such as eggs, bacon and sausage were lined up alongside American classics like pancakes and waffles.

But the more we looked, stranger things appeared. Steak, chicken and an array of fluorescent cereals, chilli and pasta dishes, a huge salad bar and, would you believe it, an ice cream counter!

You can always spot the Brits at the buffet. We are the ones piling food on our plates as if we had to get everything all at once. And returning with more than a little anxiety and guilt, as though we were about to be charged double or told we’d eaten so much we had to leave.

But soon we learned, at first with delight and later not so much, that it really was ‘all you can eat’. For years to come we would seek out these buffet bonanzas and always marvel at the huge contrast from home, both in cuisine and culture.

The prospect of eating enormous amounts of food is, of course, deeply troubling, not just in terms of health, but in the light of pressing issues of poverty, waste, consumption and privilege.

Yet, there is a deep biblical truth that reveals God as the generous Father and giver of good things: “He brought me to his banqueting table and his banner over me is love,” says the song and the Psalm.

In Isaiah 55 this is captured in the most remarkable situation: “Come, everyone who thirsts, Come to the water, And he who has no money, Come, buy and eat.”

We’re not trivialising here when we see and hear that God’s love and compassion calls us to have more than a taste of his love, blessing and provision.

He calls us to come and feast, and to come for free. Jesus uses that same description in John 7: “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.”

Moreover, he calls us to keep coming to him – to return to the Lord that he may have compassion on us.

“My ways aren’t your ways,” says the Lord – there is no rationing of his constant grace, constant forgiveness, relentless love and unending mercy.

So, let’s take up the invitation – to come to him without guilt, shame or fear – and to receive afresh all he has for us.

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.

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