He Cooked for Them

“Come, have breakfast,” Jesus said to them. None of the disciples dared to ask Him, “Who are You?” They knew it was the Lord.

John 21:12 (BSB)

The smell of a fire going, fish laid over coals, bread warming at the edge of the heat. That is the scene. The disciples had been out on the water all night, they caught nothing, then everything changed in a moment, and now they are pulling the boat to shore and Jesus is already there. Already cooking. He did not wait for them to arrive and set a formal table. He built a fire and made breakfast.

That detail stops me every time I slow down enough to notice it. The resurrected Lord, in the fullness of his glory, crouched over coals, tending a meal for tired, hungry people. He could have met them with theology. He met them with food. And when he said come and eat, nobody had to ask who he was. They already knew, in their bodies, in the air, in the weight of that ordinary, sacred moment around a fire.

There is something this passage keeps whispering about the way God works in the world. He tends to show up in the physical, in the shared, in the small. A meal made with care is not beneath the sacred. It may be one of the clearest places the sacred shows up at all. Every time we slow down enough to feed someone, to sit down together, to actually be present at a table, we are participating in something that runs all the way back to a morning on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias.

You do not have to host a dinner party to live this out. Breakfast counts. A pot of soup left on a neighbor's porch counts. Pulling up a chair and eating with someone instead of eating alone counts. The table does not have to be fancy. It just has to be real.

At the table today: Make One Meal for Someone Else This Week

This week, make one meal with someone else specifically in mind. It does not have to be elaborate. A batch of something you drop off, a simple dinner you invite one person to share, a breakfast you cook for someone in your own house instead of everyone fending for themselves. Before you start, take one quiet breath and hold that person in your mind. Let the cooking be the prayer. Notice how it feels to feed someone on purpose.

A prayer

Lord, thank you for a God who builds fires and feeds people, and for every meal that quietly reminds us you are here.

Journal

Who is one person you could feed this week, and what has been stopping you from making that happen?