Sign Me Up By Lorraine Triggs

We recently watched the Netflix documentary “Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever.” It was about tech millionaire Bryan Johnson, who according to the Netflix promo, is the man who wants to live forever—well, at least extend his life by 200 years.

There was something oddly fascinating about watching Bryan down a gazillion supplements (okay, it was just a mere 91), eat meals that didn’t resemble anything we cook or save from the New York Times Cooking app, work outad nauseam, hook up to machines for all sorts of read-outs, undergo light therapy and sleep for precisely eight hours a night.

On the Netflix Tudum site, an article promoting the movie asks, “If given the chance, would you want to live forever?” I wonder how many people, after watching the documentary, said, “Sign me up for forever.”

In a post on X, Johnson claims he is building a religion and that his “Don’t Die” movement will “save the human race” and usher in “an existence more spectacular than we can imagine.” Johnson boasts on his website, “Blueprint,” that he is the healthiest person on earth. He says that he is “asking the question, 'Are we the first generation that won’t die?’”  

I hate to break the news to Bryan Johnson (actually, I don’t hate to break the news), but that question has already been asked and answered by the invader of paradise who assured its newly created residents, “You will not surely die.” It’s the same ancient lie no matter how you dress it up or swallow it down.

In the inspired irony of Scripture, Jesus shatters the “Don’t Die” myth. When his disciples walk up the stairs to the upper room, their dusty sandals leaving footprints on the stairs, he knows the hour of his death has come. And what does he do? Figure out an algorithm to live forever? Since the Father already had that planned, Jesus takes off his outer garments, picks up a basin and towel and washes twenty-four dusty feet. He doesn't reassure his followers that no one is going to die, but he loves his own to the end—his end. Instead of supplements, he gives bread. Here, take eat, “This is my body, which is given for you.” He hands them the cup. Here, drink, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” In the darkness of a garden, Jesus looks into the cup swirling with the sins of the world and cries, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42) He looks again, knowing he alone is the worthy Lamb sacrificed for our sins, so that we may live forever.

We love our life, we lose it. We hate our life in this world and keep it for eternal life (John 12:25). We eat Living Bread and are satisfied. We drink Living Water and never thirst again. We die and live forever because the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost, the sick, the poor and hungry. He has come to save the Bryan Johnsons of the world with the promise that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life—something more spectacular than we can imagine.

I Give Up By Wil Triggs

A good friend of mine posted something on Facebook that upset me. I do my best to not look at Facebook or X or Instagram or whatever. But let’s face it: I end up scrolling just to see what’s going on. I almost never comment because I don’t want to enter the fray. Honestly, I feel embarrassed at what people post or their comments under the posts of others.
 
Anyway, this particular post wasn’t about me, but about something close to my heart. And ouch. That hurt. So, I decided to tell him. By text, which is also not the best way for me to communicate to someone.
 
He explained that this post was his way of finding truth.
 
A few minutes later, he sent another text and said he was sorry and that friendship was more important than social media. He actually apologized. He was telling me that I mattered to him more than the truth he was looking for on social media posts. This felt surprisingly good.
 
He said that he was going to give up social media for Lent.
 
This is one of the nicest things a person has said to me or done for me in a long time; what I’m about to say isn’t about that or him. But what he said prompted me to think about giving up things.
 
Pagan religions bring sacrifices to their altars or temples. All the ancients had some form of it. People sacrifice to appease their gods, even and especially the false ones.
 
Maybe we deny ourselves to fulfill ourselves. But often as I hear people talking about their denials, it can feel a little more like the path to a pagan temple than a horrifying forever life-changing road to calvary.

To give up something for Lent is not to be rid of it for good. Because Easter is coming. Then, all the things folks give up come back, probably and most often, with a vengeance. Why not? There’s a time limit; that’s the idea. We fallen humans can’t sacrifice like God did. It’s impossible. We can’t really atone or intercede for anyone, ourselves included. And the finished work of Jesus means we don’t have to.
 
My friend's apology was better than his sacrifice, to me at least. God doesn’t want our sacrifices. He wants our hearts.
 
People give up coffee or chocolate or television or social media. But for me, I’m giving up on giving up. When people give up, does God have their hearts?
 
Perhaps I’m going to take hold of something new instead of giving up some old pleasure or habit.
 
Maybe I’m going to take hold of prayer. I’ll pray to God out loud, in private—just him and me and, ok, well, maybe my dog—but out loud. It’s a prayer that’s learning to talk in a new way. Speak to God audibly when no one else is around to hear.
 
Face-to-face church means that this Sunday, I’m going to make eye contact. Listen. Sing. No other day will ever be a repeat of this day. Someone is waiting for another person to say hello, listen, pray together, be the messenger. Help me find that person and not look away.
 
Life is the anti-Groundhog Day. Every day is new. There are no repeats. Grab hold of each one. Hold my hand, look into my eyes and see. Find the unique in every day.
 
Yet nothing I do can add to the splendorous horror of what Jesus has done by giving everything—no, more than everything—dying when he didn’t have to and, from my limited point of view, never should have had to—"Get behind me evil one.” Instead, “Yes, die, servant king and wash my feet.”
 
Still, I don’t understand. What is the word I’m trying to find? As I give up giving up, my heart battered head-throbbing soul cries out: Be on the lookout for adding more Jesus today. Let him explain himself along the way, at least as much as you or I can fathom. There’s a word for what he does, for who he is. An ewe lamb lost, found, me drinking cool water from the water running still, me eating like one who has not eaten in forever, a taste of food so new, lapping up like water or bloody meat from the lowest manger. There’s a word for that. Only one.
 
I do not yet know what I will do, but I will not give up on him who has taken it all on completely to the utmost—not giving up but taking hold. . .drinking the cup that only he could hold. . .grasping the chalice only he could shape, mold, drink—swallowing it all to the point of death, the dregs to the very last breath and then folding the linen graveclothes when he was done with them forever. I long to see him, recognize him again, hear the not-me word when he breaks the bread, remeber how he was not in the room with us and then there he was in our midst like he had never gone because he never had and never will, still he is here, word, flesh, always and ever nearer than near.

O my love, not mine but ours, wondrous to behold, yet beyond me even me in his grasp. Down he reaches beyond the farthest to find farther fathoms further down, down he bends. He travels on foot beyond the very last bend.
 
Take my hand, my dear ones, we’ve a wedding to attend.

My Favorite Stuffies By Lorraine Triggs

Typically, at the start of the school year, stuffies (short for stuffed animals for the uninitiated) show up to Kindergarten Bible school. Though not registered for Kids’ Harbor, we never turn away stuffies of any color, critter or costume.

I understand this attachment to stuffies. When my son was young, his treasured Winnie-the-Pooh stuffie came along for a family weekend in Chicago. And then it happened. We had checked out of the hotel and were hurrying to catch the train out of the city, when our son wailed, “I left Pooh Bear in the room. I need him.”

In a matter of seconds, the concierge and the front desk and housekeeping staff became involved in our family drama to retrieve Winnie the Pooh. When the concierge announced that Pooh Bear has been reunited with his family, the entire front desk broke out in applause.

I thought of stuffies the other week as I read 2 Chronicles 13 for Women’s Bible Study. Abijah, king of Judah, and Jeroboam, king of Israel were at war when Abijah stood up on Mount Zemariam and jarred Israel’s collective memory regarding to whom God gave the kingdom, and questioned Jeroboam’s battle plan: “And now you think to withstand the kingdom of the Lord in the hand of the sons of David, because you are a great multitude and have with you the golden calves that Jeroboam made you for gods.”

It probably comes from hanging out with Kindergarteners every Sunday, but I started to laugh as I imagined Jeroboam’s 800,000 “chosen mighty warriors” tucking their little golden calf stuffies under their arms—too attached to leave them behind during the battle.

I wish I could laugh at the stuffies in my life, but like the mighty warriors, I am too attached to them to leave them behind. One of my favorite stuffies is Creature Comfort. Then there’s the twin stuffies Achievement and Accolade. The coolest stuffie talks, and her name is Miss Opinion. When paired with Bluetooth, she can come with me anywhere and anytime. Oh, how I love Miss Opinion.

Your stuffie collection might be different from mine, but not our shared attachment to them. It’s the attachment that tethers us to the here and now, to what we can see and to what we think we control. Our gaze is distinctly horizontal, looking for a human savior to rescue us.

In his bookThe Heart in Pilgrimage: A Treasury of Classic Devotionals on the Christian Life, Leland Ryken has a devotional by Richard Baxter, “The Saints’ Everlasting Rest.” Stuffies probably weren’t at the forefront of Baxter's mind when he wrote this devotional, but he did offer a solution for our attachment to them: look up to our eternal rest. Baxter wrote, “take one walk every day in the new Jerusalem.” He calls to mind Daniel, who “in his captivity, daily opened his window toward Jerusalem, though far out of sight, he went to God in his devotions; so may the believing soul, in this captivity of the flesh, look towards Jerusalem which is above.”
 
It’s Lent—the season of preparation for Good Friday sorrow and Easter joy. Perhaps the best way to prepare for resurrection—both Christ’s and our promised one—is to open our windows in captivity or in a den filled with real lions (not stuffed ones) or in our creature comforts and take that daily walk in the New Jerusalem.

Something Happened at the Grocer's By Wil Triggs

When I grew up, Saturday was the day for chores and shopping. We packed a lot into that single day. On a good day, we could squeeze in a visit to one of my older siblings’ family, about 30 to 45 minutes away, or visit my grandparents on the other side of town. Laundry, gardening, cutting the grass, grocery shopping: Saturday meant domestic work like no other day of the week.
 
I have discovered that in other families where the moms didn’t work outside the home, Wednesday was the day for grocery shopping. Lorraine tells me that her mother also had a laundry day. So that structure spread the tasks out a bit into the week. My mom had no such luxury. Saturday was an everything day.
 
That was the day I usually went to the grocery store with my mom. She typically shopped one day a week, on Saturday. I would advocate for the food and meals I liked and find reasons for her not to purchase the foods I didn’t like. Usually, she indulged my pickiness.
 
On one trip, at the grocery store entrance, I took note of a poster that had been there for a few weeks. Similar posters hung in various places in the store so everyone would be sure to see them. I saw my mom talking to strangers in the produce aisle and at the meat counter and concluded that the grocery stores were going to do something bad. My mom wasn’t sure what she was going to do about it, but she didn’t seem happy. Different shoppers would look at the posters and shake their heads in bewilderment.
 
The big news? The grocery store was about to open on Sundays.
 
I didn’t know what the word “sabbath” meant, but from what the people were saying, the store was making a big mistake. As far as I knew, this was something no other store had ever done. And there was talk of judgment from God for this. As a child, that scared me. If God was going to get mad at the grocery store where my mom bought our food, what did that mean for us? Would we need to figure out a different way to get our food? Would God punish us for buying food that could now be purchased on Sunday even though we did our shopping on other days?
 
I could imagine God doing all kinds of things to make us know how angry he was about this. The meat at the counter could go bad. All the vegetables I like could disappear (which weren’t that many), and we would be forced to choose from the others (yuck). Milk would sour. If people ate food purchased on the wrong day, God would strike them down with a sickness or a disease. I easily conceived of the scary God ready to teach everyone a lesson about obedience and disobedience.
 
It was easy for my child-imagination to run with the anger of God—thinking that he seemed to take a certain glee in catching us red-handed and letting us have it. That view apparently was not uncommon. Friends recently \told me that, as children, they thought of God as angry and poised to punish them at every turn. 
 
But imagining the real God as responding in steadfast love as the Creator to his creatures—even creatures who made themselves enemies of the One who made them-- was much more difficult for me and probably other humans as well. I would even go so far as to say impossible.
 
I never would have imagined his coming to earth, willingly suffering and then dying for people who don’t even care about him, for people who would be just as happy to forget him. That kind of thinking—definitely above my pay grade!
 
We had to learn the way of the cross, to hear in our hearts what Jesus said when his critics accused the disciples of breaking the Sabbath or to hear Jesus explaining the burning truth of our own versions of the misconceptions he addressed on the Emmaus Road.
 
He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?  Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?  I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” Matthew 12:3-8
 
Man-made laws or practices inspired by the laws of God can be as fluid as the people who make them and interpret them. Then we try to live with or around the laws because we imagine God to be like us. He is not like us. His ways are not ours. I wonder which is greater in number—the number of idols in our modern world or the number of Pharisees accusing Jesus of wrong-headed teaching. Do we think we are made right with God by not doing business at a place that is open on Sunday? We make our own versions of this fallacy and look down on all the others who do not share similar fallacies.
 
Following rules is not the same as knowing Jesus. Do I really think rules—or, to be more honest, my interpretation of how one lives out these rules—can move God along in making my soul more like the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world? Do I sometimes want to go back to the old ways and trust in laws the way the Israelites doubted and wanted to go back to making bricks or eating leeks in Egypt?
 
When Jesus called the disciples who left their nets to follow him, did they care what other people thought? How many people walked away sad because of the people or things they loved were more important than Jesus? People seem to be happy to legislate righteousness as long as they are in control of defining what that means. True spirituality is not man-made; we can only receive it from the hands of the Shepherd.
 
Then Jesus said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then to enter His glory?”  And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the thing concerning himself. (Luke 24:25-27)
 
"…Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scripture?"
 
Father, help us recognize the difference between the golden calves we make with our religious hands and the Lion/Lamb nail-scarred hands not made by hands.
 
Jesus, teach us your way, not ours; guide us to your still waters, not our raging ones; thank you for not washing us with manufactured cleaning solutions; we bless you, fall down and cry thanks to you for washing us with your shed blood.
 
Holy Spirit, guide and control; give us Sabbath rest. Deliver us from our own personal Egypts that tell us we know more than we do. Free us from idols. Help us put our trust in the only living God. Lift us out of comfort or fear into the risk-embracing servanthood of the Shepherd King.
 
Lord of the Sabbath, help us to live every day of every week dependent on you. Let our hearts burn for you today and this Resurrection Sunday, this week, this flickering life of days, each one a grain of sand in the hourglass, falling, kneeling, forming a little mound of life that Jesus can turn over and start fresh at any time he chooses. Let it all be an offering here today and then waft away like the flickering smoke rising from campfires of worship, prayer and praise. Falling sands, burning hearts, sweet aromas.
 
For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. 2 Corinthians 2:15

Prison Perspectives By Wil Triggs

Irina Ratushinskaya was a Soviet dissident who was sent to the Gulag back in the 1980s. Her poetry got her arrested. Can you imagine that? While in prison, she wrote poems on bars of soap so she could quickly wash them away. She also memorized the lines to write down on cigarette papers later. She dared to believe,and somehow the strength of her poetic faith became her undoing. Her case drew global attention. In the prayer force I helped lead back then, we featured her, and people prayed for her. We went to Washington to advocate for her and other religious prisoners. In those days, both sides of the aisle could mostly agree that international religious liberty was a good thing. During the Reagan administration, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, she was released. She lived in the U.S. for a time, then England and eventually returned to Russia, where she died of cancer July 15, 2017.

I came across this paragraph she wrote about her prison experience:
You must not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to hate. Not because your tormentors have not earned it. But if you allow hatred to take root, it would flourish and spread during your years in the camps, driving out everything else, and ultimately corrode and warp your soul. You will no longer be yourself, your identity will be destroyed, all that will remain will be a hysterical, maddened and bedeviled husk of the human being that once was.

Alexei Navalny’s Prison Exercise
The one-year anniversary of Alexey Navalny’s (a Russian anti-corruption activist) death was covered recently in a BBC news program. The camera followed his mother and father to the gravestone. The reporter said it was brave for the people who went to the grave to simply show up with the NSB/KGB watching. The crowd broke into spontaneous chants of thanks in Russian.

This excerpt from Navalny's prison memoir strikes a chord:
I have always thought, and said openly, that being a believer makes it easier to live your life and, to an even greater extent, engage in opposition politics. Faith makes life simpler.

The initial position for this exercise is the same as for the previous one. You lie in your bunk looking up at the one above and ask yourself whether you are a Christian in your heart of hearts. It is not essential for you to believe some old guys in the desert once lived to be eight hundred years old, or that the sea was literally parted in front of someone. But are you a disciple of the religion whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the price for their sins? Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? If you can honestly answer yes, what is there left for you to worry about? Why, under your breath, would you mumble a hundred times something you read from a hefty tome you keep in your bedside table? Don’t worry about the morrow, because the morrow is perfectly capable of taking care of itself.

My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. They won’t let me down and will sort out all my headaches. As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me.

The Apostle Pavel's (Paul's) Last Words in Scripture
As I think of persecuted Christians around the world these days, I do think more than ever of Paul’s times in prisons. How he suffered, served and wrote from his time in chains. Our evening series in 2 Timothy ended last Sunday, and Felipe Chamy pointed out that these are the last words in Scripture from Paul.

Do your best to come to me soon. For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry. Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds.  Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message. At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth.  The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus remained at Corinth, and I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus. Do your best to come before winter. Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers.

The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.  (2 Timothy 4:9-22)

As Irina, Alexei and Pavel demonstrate, our fellowship with one another--in, out and beyond trials, prisons,death and life--forms an underappreciated hallmark of our walk with Jesus. May each of us walk in truth together and love one another today and always.

Go Bags By Lorraine Triggs

We have moved on from the early COVID days of hunkering down and hoarding to go bags, which my reliable dictionary defines as a “bag packed with survival supplies and kept ready for use in case of an emergency that requires rapid evacuation.”  

One site encourages go bags that “strike a balance between being well prepared and having a go bag that’s easy to maintain and carry. Exactly what you pack depends on you and your location (e.g., weather; cash-based economy; availability of food, water, and medicine).” It then provides a checklist of twenty-seven items, each with a sub list of five or more items to pack in that easy-to-maintain-and-carry go bag.

I am in favor of go bags, but I can’t help envisioning mine becoming bigger and bigger as I keep adding to it just in case, well, just in case of an emergency. I not only want to be prepared but also overprepared for any impending disaster.

My mom and mother-in-law carried their go bags in the cricks of their elbows, and rarely left home without them—emergency or no emergency. The true emergency was when my mom misplaced her early model of a go bag, and we would turn the house upside down to find it.

I don’t think the Bible has its ancient versions of go bags. Abraham grabbed all his bags and packed up his household when the Lord said, “Go from our country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1) The writer of Hebrews reminds us that Abraham “went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8)—hardly the best plan for rapid evacuation and preparedness—but it was more than enough for Abraham because his security was in the God who said go.

In Psalm 91, however, the psalmist’s security was in the God who said hold fast as the arrows flew by day, pestilence stalked in darkness and destruction lay waste at noon. The psalmist’s emergency plan was the God in whom he trusted. God said hold fast, so he did. Who needs a go bag when you have shelter and refuge.

Well, I still need one. God says go, and I say yes, as I am stuffing the bag with my plans to make my future secure. God says stay, and I dive into the bag looking for what I need to control the hard situation.

The New City Catechism asks: “What is our only hope in life and death?”

The answer: “That we are not our own but belong, body and soul, both in life and death, to God and to our Savior Jesus Christ.”

I think it’s time to empty the go bag.

One Less Virtuous Life By Lorraine Triggs

In a neighborhood filled with houses of two-parent families and stay-at-home moms and kids who roamed the streets like free-range chickens, Justine stood out. She lived two doors down from us, with no husband, no kids, no pets. Just Justine. She was the only adult we were allowed to address by her first name. We didn’t call her Miss Justine or Aunt Justine, and apparently, she had no last name, or otherwise we would have used that.

From our childish perspective, Justine’s biggest fault was her choice of Halloween candy. It was so awful that we just stopped going to her front door altogether. The neighborhood band of mothers explained that Justine was frugal, and didn’t want to waste money on candy for a bunch of clowns. She was also frugal with her time, and didn’t waste it chatting with the neighbors. If you passed by her house when she was outside, she’d give a curt nod by way of greeting and carry on with whatever she was doing at the time. It was hard to miss the leave-me-be vibes Justine gave off.

I wish I could say that Justine had her Ebeneezer Scrooge moment and stuffed our trick or treat bags with the finest chocolate in town and threw the best block party ever, but she didn't. She remained aloof and detached, even when when  my parents and the neighbors who lived between Justine’s and our house mowed her lawn, shoveled her snowy driveway, worked on her car or sent us kids to help her carry groceries from the car to her, well, carry the groceries to her front porch. The neighbors and my folks were generous to Justine because they had experienced God's generosity. It was never about economics.

A lot of us think of frugality as a virtue. According to Webster’s it’s “characterized by or reflecting economy in the use of resources.” We’re stewarding our resources, taking care of our families, being wise in our spending, showing tough love, not turning our country into a welfare state. The problem with thinking of frugality and its cousin parsimony as virtues is when we become economic in the use of resources such as generosity, compassion, love, kindness and gentleness, and in deciding who should be on the receiving end of them.

The very, very, very good news for all of us is that God is not frugal in his resources. His very words express his extravagant nature. In Genesis 22:18, God doesn’t just say that Abraham will have a lot of offspring, but God will “surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.” (Genesis 22:18) It’s not just some land God promised Moses, but a promised land flowing with milk and honey. The psalmists could have written that God is love, but instead they wrote that God abounds in love; that he not only removes sins but also removes them as far as the east is from the west.

Frugality isn't actually a virtue, especially for people upon whom God has lavished the riches of his glorious grace. The true virtue, the true goodness is when we are like our extravagant God and share with a hurting, dying world his abounding love and mercy that removes their sins as far as the east is from the west.

A Bowl of Red By Wil Triggs

It is better to eat soup with someone you love than steak with someone you hate. Proverbs 15:17 (TLB)
 
Chili is American borscht.

For me, Slavic cuisine was an acquired taste. I came to understand that the staple soup known as borscht had as many variations as babushkas who made it. The Ukrainian version, which lore says is the origin for the soup, is more potato and tomato and lighter meat than the Russian version that is heavier on cabbage and beet. I’ve seen older ladies get into heated debates over how to cook it, even dismissing other versions as nothing more than “just soup.”
 
The individualized way of cooking is as true or even more true when it comes to us Americans and our chili. We have served chili at events here at the church. It’s a go-to meal for my small group when we eat a meal together. It was my great privilege to serve as a judge at two or maybe even three of our Chili Cook-offs. I still remember the Enstrom chili and the Sohmer chili and another chili from an international that I think took top prize one of the years I judged. Imagine that—a non-American winning the chili cookoff.
 
And thanks to the Super Bowl, there will likely be more chili eaten this Sunday than any other Sunday of the year. Sure, there’s wings and nachos and pizza, but chili can stay warm through the whole game. People talk about the game or the commercials or the half-time show. Me? I’m thinking about chili.
 
I’ve been helped along in my thinking by Sam Sifton. He’s the founding editor of the Cooking Section of theNew York Timesamong other things and at the end of January, theTimespublished Sam’s “Our Ultimate Guide to Making the Best Chili.” I like his writing about food so much that he may be the single best secret reason to read or even subscribe.
 
When it comes to protein, Sam gives all the options: beef, poultry, lamb, game. He talks about beans or no beans. He describes various chilies and tells the difference betweenchilepowder andchilipowder and tells how to make both at home. He gives step-by-step instructions for cooking your chili and then lists all different toppings: fruits, vegetables, herbs, dairy, starches. He mentions cornbread, but I’m flummoxed that there is no mention of adding a little cornmeal to the pot toward the end. The piece concludes with links to five best chili recipes to try. Thank you, Sam.
 
Food is a powerful sensory experience.
 
Before they fled Egypt, God’s people had to eat the Passover meal. They had to be ready to flee, but the meal was not a drive-thru eat-as-you-flee event. It was a structured dinner that is still eaten today. Think of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew. Maybe that was their version of chili. Think of Isaac discerning the identity of his son in part by the food brought to him to eat.
 
Some of Jesus' miracles were around food—the wedding feast, the miraculous catch of fish, the boy’s lunch that fed thousands. Jesus’ critics did not like the people he ate with. The disciples recognized the risen Jesus when he broke bread.
 
The Apostle Peter was hungry, and as the food was being prepared, before his food came, a vision of forbidden foods came down from heaven in a sheet, signaling a new freedom and a new way forward that was life-changing. God told him to kill and eat.  It took three times for Peter to get it.
 
There’s something about eating together that is more significant than we realize—especially for Americans. After all, besides chili, we also came up with fast food, because who has time to stop and smell the chili or whatever else we’re about to eat. I believe that Jesus calls us to slow down and to eat together more often, to enjoy both the people and the food at a meal. Every meal can be a celebration, sometimes even a revelation, other times just a respite from all the craziness.
 
When we read in Scripture, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8), we may devotionalize it away from actual seeing and tasting. But God speaks to us in food in special ways like nothing else. So don’t lose the wonder of your chili in the scrimmages and commercials and half-time entertainment. Turn off the television for a few minutes. Taste the food. Look at the people who are with you. Celebrate together. The food and the people around you are more important than the outcome of the game. Enjoy.

Here's the link to Sam Sifton's “Ultimate Guide to Making the Best Chili.”