Go ahead—eat your food and be happy; drink your wine and
be cheerful. It’s all right with God. Ecclesiastes 9:7 GNB
The “beacon” for October is our weekly coffee morning, which is
certainly going from strength to strength meeting each week on
on Thursdays between 10am and 12am and is now going out on
tour visiting our friends in Shamrock House and Mayo court on an alternate
monthly basis. My grateful thanks to all who help to serve teas and coffee,
those who bake cakes and those who set up and take down each week and
especially those who come along and support it – it has been lovely to see you
all and everyone is welcome. At our first Mayo coffee morning recently,
someone asked me: what’s it all about pastor – eat, drink and be merry? My
response to that was definitely yes – it’s about meeting together, enjoying
ourselves, eating and drinking, an opportunity to make new
friends, to get to know each and to support one another. The
writer in Ecclesiastes was saying: go ahead to eat, drink and be
merry [be happy and cheerful] because God approves – it’s alright
by Him. In doing so, each week we continue the long-held practice of the early
church to offer loving and generous hospitality meeting at the church and in the
homes In Acts 2:42b, it tells us that ‘they broke bread in their homes with glad
and sincere hearts.’ I expect wine would have helped to wash down the bread
and the meal as grapes were more readily available than fresh water in those
days and could be crushed and fermented to make wine. Today we are in a
sense replacing the wine with tea, coffee or juice and replacing the bread with
biscuits, scones, and cakes – I can certainly recommend Ruth’s homemade
marble cake and lemon drizzle cake that is sometimes on offer – makes me
hungry just thinking about it! (Thanks Ruth.) I think an appropriate re-imagining
of this verse would be: go ahead eat cake, drink your coffee and be merry,
its ok with God. Let’s continue to do this when we meet at the coffee morning
and also, when we are at home talking to friends and family because it gives us
an opportunity to be beacons and share a little bit how Jesus helps us in our
lives and that God is not a killjoy – eating and drinking and being merry definitely
is ok with Him.

Prayers, blessings, and love

Robert