You Have Company or Eat To The Glory Of God

If I have said it once I have said it a thousand times, flexibility is the key to living in Bolivia. Saturday morning I woke up expecting to have a fairly relaxing day off. We had our neighbors coming over for dinner that evening to bid them farewell before their return to Canada and I was to grill that evening. The rest of the day was kind of free and I was looking forward to finishing a book that I had been reading. Then the phone rang.

"Pastor Gordon, this is Vicente. We are at the bus depot. We've come to visit the churches in Santa Cruz. Can you tell us the number of bus we need to get to the church?"

I called our district president. "Did you know that the national board was coming today?"

"No."

It was meant to be a surprise.

"Would it help if I took them to lunch for you?"

"Oh, thank you, pastor."

After a quick phone call to Bryan to make arrangements and a short trip to the store for Niki, it was soon time to meet the board and take them to lunch. However, as I said to Bryan, I didn't really know who "the board" meant. It turned out to be five board members, five wives and one child. More people than we could possibly squeeze into the Toyota (there were an additional seven from Santa Cruz plus two missionaries making twenty people) to go for lunch. So I suggested that Bryan and I would go and pick something up and bring back lunch for everyone.

I had not planned to eat much lunch that day due to our evening supper guests. But, one cannot refuse to eat with company so I had a nice chicken lunch with the board, wives, child and brothers from Santa Cruz. By now it was mid afternoon and the thought of eating again in three hours didn't appeal to me.

We had excused ourselves and were on the way home when my phone rang. It was Niki. "Where are you? The neighbors need to come earlier because they have to be somewhere else later this evening." Now dinner was only two hours away.

The phone rang again later that afternoon. "Pastor, we want to invite you to eat with us tomorrow after church. We are going to have the national and district boards and everyone share together at my house." Thank you. I already had one dinner engagement for Sunday, now I had two. So I would eat at the first one and then go for my second lunch with the board. I could have begged off but that would not have been so good. I frequently have the district leaders over for a meal and to refuse to go when invited would be saying I don't want your food but I expect you to eat mine.

When Paul said to do whatever we do, to eat, drink and act for the glory of God, did he have too many dinner invitations in mind? Eating can be both a missionary hazard and ministry. Too much food is not so good but eating with fellow believers can be as much ministry as an hour long sermon as far as relationships go. So I ate and will continue to eat, doing it, I trust, for the glory of God.