Eating with the Enemy

I got my hair cut the other day.   People talk to the people cutting their hair, and people cutting hair talk to the people in their chair.  As the hair stylist clipped away, I asked her,  “Do you have any plans for Thanksgiving?”  After heaving  a heavy sigh, she exclaimed,  “Yea, I do.  Our family is getting together.  I am cooking.  I will be glad when it is over because I don’t like some of those people.”

Grocery stores are full on this Thanksgiving Eve with people picking up foods prepared or to prepare.   Highways and airports will be full this day with people heading to Thanksgiving gatherings near and far.  Sometimes, those gatherings are approached with great joy.   Sometimes, those gatherings are approached with fear and trepidation because of the truth that sometimes people even in families do not get along.

 

Like that woman cutting my hair, there are many reasons why people do not get along in families.    Those reasons include wounds that cut deep… words that should have been left unsaid… actions that have not been forgotten… discussions that escalated into arguments… and on and on.   As I read Psalm 23 recently,  one of its verses leaped out at me that says:

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

Though I have read those words many times, they spoke to me as Thanksgiving and Christmas approach.   Perhaps eating with the enemy (even with family members who seem to be enemies) is a God-given thing to give us something we need to know and learn.

Most of us know that the first Thanksgiving in what we now call  the United States happened in November 1621 when Pilgrims and their neighbors, the Native Americans, gathered for a meal together.    I am very certain that the Pilgrims and the Natives had their differences in language, faith, and viewpoints.  Historians tell us that there were around 50 Pilgrims and 90 Native Americans together.     Despite their differences, they came together.   Though there were ways they differed,  there were many things that united them.  One of them was knowing they had been blessed by their Creator.

Is not the same true in the story we will ponder during Advent and Christmas?    Wise men, royalty from a far away land, will join with lowly shepherds at a stable in Bethlehem to worship a child from a lineage of peasant parents.     Though shepherds and wise men were different, they were united in their worship at the One born of Mary who would make all the difference. 

Perhaps in eating with the enemy in these days   despite our differences we will learn to more fully live together.  Have a joy-filled week.—Pastor Randy Wall 

  Prayer:    O God, bind us together through the love in Christ that unites us and breaks down the walls between us;  through Christ our Lord.  Amen.