We sometimes need to learn from other cultures because a culture can lose sight of important things in life. The West is prone to lose sight of things and arrogantly think they see it all clearly and think that what they do mot see is not worth seeing. Ignore all that and learn from what the West does not see. Social intimacy such as eating together and the whole custom of breaking bread is lost from much of Western culture. Some countries still put great store on family meal times. There is a social phenomenon lost by many which is that eating with someone else or with a group can involve a fundamental human need to share feelings and share mind. Coffee houses used to be important in the West. Nowadays we do have coffee shops where people can meet and chat over coffee. Not quite what the coffee houses used to be. Insurance companies in the City of London started out of coffee houses where merchants could discuss trades and shipping knowledge and tips and use the knowledge eventually to develop insurance schemes and react to shipping events and accidents. Intimacy, though, we tend to confine to what happens between couples in private, yet intimacy in sharing coffee or tea and meals is very important for a balanced healthy life and a loss for those who live in solitude. Christ Jesus made much of mealtime intimacy between friends or in a household. It is still an important part of what he teaches and practices today. He famously announced in Revelation in a letter he dictated to a church after his resurrection, that he stands at the door and knocks and if anyone hears his voice and opens the door, he will come in and sup with that one, and that one sup with him. Intimacy. Nothing sexual like we see obsessively portrayed in our movies. This is pure human intimacy between friends or between master and servant. He the master invites the servant who is faithful in serving him to sit and be treated to a meal where Jesus himself serves. It is spiritual of course, not involving physical food, except in the communion Lord’s Supper of course. He reaches into the heart of the one he singles out for this and he knocks on that door of the heart and when the hearer hears and opens that door, he comes right in, right deep the innermost being where he the master of hearts aline can go, and he sets a table and shares a spiritual meal of the knowledge of himself at that purest, spiritual level, and that person finds Jesus to be human and alive in a body and everything the soul really needs, a mediator with God Himself. This food is eternal life. To those who believe and receive him. The bread of life and water of life. The fount of living water, from him whose blood bought atonement of our sins.
