It has been decades since I served a three year old supper, but the comparison still made me laugh. On Sunday the minister spoke about what a picky eater he had been as a child, and how he got upset if the applesauce leaked into the peas. He did not want them to touch. Is this a universal desire for kids? He was
using it as an analogy for how we tend to separate good from truth.
There was a playday at the school that week. The minister described how some kids were adamant about the rules, while other students just wanted to have fun. Both opinions have value, and yet something happens when we manage to twine the two together.
The focus of the church service was communion. There were plates of holy supper bread, and cups of wine and grape juice. The passage he recited expressed it well.
"Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb."
Marriage is an odd word to apply to a meal, unless you see it in terms of the union of love with wisdom. Bread is a comfort food, warm from the oven, and it corresponds to love. Wine is the result of fermentation, and what rises to the top after dregs have settled. Wisdom is like that, the reward for wrestling with life.
Yet neither is complete without the other. Psalm 85 says it beautifully.
"Mercy and truth have met together. Justice and peace have kissed."
So let the toddlers keep their food in compartments. The meal God is inviting us to
embraces both.