Breakfast

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Breakfast //
noun: a meal eaten in the morning, the first of the day.

Easter Sunday is probably one of my favourite days. When I was younger, it often began with egg hunts in my grandparents' garden. This year, it began with a cup of tea and reading a favourite Bible passage; when the risen Jesus appears to his friends to have breakfast with them:

“Come, let’s have some breakfast,” Jesus said to them. And not one of the disciples needed to ask who it was, because every one of them knew it was the Lord.  Then Jesus came close to them and served them the bread and the fish." John 21:12-13

And it struck me when reading this, that there were so many other things that Jesus could have been doing. The newly resurrected Christ - who had just defeated death, fulfilled prophecies and changed the course of history - stops to serve breakfast to his closest friends.

Instead of running around town to prove his alive-ness or preaching his best resurrection sermon to crowds, he simply pauses to invest in the people he loves best.

And I am so encouraged and challenged by this act because it serves as a powerful reminder that even when to-do lists linger; or life feels hectic; that things often work best when the day begins with pausing to eat breakfast with Jesus.

Because for me, the months of March and April have passed in a busy haze. Looking back, I can't quite remember what happened; it's felt like life has been on fast-forward. It's been exhausting and mad and a little bit overwhelming at times, too.  

But today, this passage breathed perspective into my hectic rhythms and routines. 

Immediately before this passage, some of the friends of Jesus go fishing through the night, but they don't catch anything until Jesus appears the next morning. He gives them one simple instruction, "Throw your nets over the other side..." and, you guessed it, they catch a lot of fish (153, in fact). 

And, retrospectively, I think there are so many moments in the past few months where I've been a bit like these fishermen. Desperately pressing into life in the way I think will be successful, when it would have been a lot easier to pause, and receive a simple instruction from Jesus. 

It's an invitation: "Come, let's have some breakfast...". A reminder in the busy and hectic days that pausing to eat and to pray is the best way to begin.  Maybe alone. Maybe with friends.

If Jesus made time for that, then I want to, too.