Tuesday: Sharing a Meal or Communal Activity: Building Bonds
September 9
- Scripture: Acts 2:46 — “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.”
- Reflection: Sharing meals or participating together in a communal activity create spaces for authentic connection, fostering relationships rooted in care and love. They’re acts of belonging and gratitude. You’re gathered to share food or other experiences and strengthen bonds.
The particular truth about sharing a meal together is that we’re meeting each other’s essential needs. Someone is preparing and feeding others, and someone is eating and cherishing the experience. We focus on basics first, then realize we’re also nourishing other parts of our beings.
Who is someone with whom you’d like to connect? Or someone with whom you regularly do connect? Are you surrounding yourself with people, when possible, who uplift you and support you?
We all have times and relationships that require that we give out energy, and become depleted. For most people, being connected to folks with good energy and good attitudes will help revitalize us. (For introverts, we acknowledge that retreating and being alone helps renew energy.)
If you cannot share a meal, can you attend a class together? Work with a coach or mentor? Take a walk? Share a conversation? Read a book together and discuss it? Find other ways to nourish each other? - Spiritual Practice: Make sure to set aside time to cultivate significant relationships. Make it intentional. Be flexible about how you connect, but reach out and include communal or relational activities in your schedule.
Song:
- Count On Me by Bruno Mars: https://youtu.be/Yc6T9iY9SOU?si=pxNlzvyoJkPc-gI2
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. ― J.R.R. Tolkien
Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious. ― Ruth Reichl
Sept 9 Daily Devotional