Happy Thanksgiving! Is there any greater day in the United States to plan, prepare, and enjoy a true feast of food? Honestly, when we realize that the first Thanksgiving (minus the modern-day fanfare and imagery) was a celebration of a successful harvest, how can food not be the centerpiece? And how can we not give praise to the God who provided it all? Yet, as we look a little more deeply into the practice of feasting, we discover that God has far more purpose for feasting than worship and praise of Him. In fact, in our research for The Sublime Soiree: God’s Invitation to the Party of your Life,we learned that God designed feasting to celebrate recovering the lost as much, if not more, than honoring something new. Let’s take a look at an excerpt from Chapter 7 of our book, “Soul Food”. This chapter reveals God’s true intentions for feasting. We pray it makes your Thanksgiving all the more enjoyable as you see that breaking bread with others is a pivotal tool in pointing us toward God.
The Sublime Soiree, Chapter 7: Soul Food, pages 89-91
According to Australian Pastor Rory Shiner there are three key elements that delineate a feast from a typical meal:
- We consume foods we don’t normally eat (delicacies like turkey and dressing, bread pudding, prime rib, etc.)
- We eat communally (what fun is it to feast alone?)
- We typically are celebrating something (a birthday, a wedding or some other special occasion)
Shiner also talks about the number of special occasions Jesus attended – from the wedding at Cana, to his acceptance of people’s dinner party invitations, right on through to his recommissioning breakfast for the disciples after His resurrection. The key point, Shiner shares, lies in the reason for each of those accounts: something or someone was lost, but then was found. And the Kingdom of Heaven celebrates recovering people and things once lost. That brings whole new meaning to the verse from Isaiah that we shared at the beginning of this section.
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. — Isaiah 25:6 ESV
God is celebrating the salvation of His children in this verse from Isaiah – a people recovered who once were lost. And He describes that great exchange as a feast. Shiner sees the vast difference in God’s approach from other religious idols when he writes,
When Aristotle dreamt, he dreamt of reason and restraint. The Buddha dreamt of the end of desire and the dissolution of personality. But when Israel dreamt, they dreamt of rich food, big crowds, and fine wine – a feast before the Lord.
Other religions pursue paradise through behavior modification and constraint. God provides paradise through His own gracious actions and tells us to celebrate! The contrast reminds (us) of a movie we recently watched called Babette’s Feast. The movie is set in an 18th century village in Denmark where a small group of religious, ascetic people dwell. A Parisian woman who is exiled from her homeland soon arrives in the village seeking shelter, and she begins to serve them as their cook in exchange for a place to live. And as she attends to them, she notices their lack of joy and increasing intolerance of each other.
When the cook, Babette, wins 10,000 francs in the French lottery, one would think she would leave her dour environs and return to her homeland. Instead, Babette invests all of her winnings in the ingredients for a fabulous feast that she prepares for her pious friends. Their first response to the invitation is dread. How could they participate in such indulgence? They privately agree to oblige the invitation, but not to enjoy any of it, as that would be “sinful”. As they consume each decadent course, however, their mindsets begin to change. Joy begins to well up within them, as well as goodwill toward each other.
Rory Shiner says, “Jesus feasted with sinners because Jesus believed and taught that the kingdom of God was a party of abundant grace to which we all are invited.” Babette seemingly wanted her friends to “taste and see that the Lord is good,” and they did. She gave it all – every franc of her winnings — and the villagers were transformed by her grace. Their very souls were recovered. And when we respond positively to God’s invitation to join Him at the banquet table, we are reformed, as well – and moved to invite others to join us at God’s great feast.
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The villagers in Babette’s Feast remind us of something author and Bible teacher Erin Davis recently shared with us. As we interviewed her about her Bible study entitled 7 Feasts: Finding Christ in the Sacred Celebrations of the Old Testament, Erin shared about a recent discovery in her Scripture reading:
We tend to think that the sign of spiritual maturity is “I’m checking all of these boxes, and I’m coloring inside the lines and I’m doing all these things right,’” and really, when the Gospel is in us and when it flows through us, and when it’s transforming everything we see, what marks that is freedom! . . . You want to be mature? Walk in freedom!
Babette understood that freedom and the joy that it brings, so much so that she gladly shared it with friends, willingly paying the cost. And we can, too!
As you gather at your Thanksgiving table today, or join fellow movie fans at the theater, or visit your favorite restaurant, or head outdoors for the annual backyard family football game, remember the God who sets captives free, who cares for the widows and orphans, who loved the world so much that He gave His one and only Son that all of us might live forever. Then, pass the plate of His invitation to those who need to receive it. And joyfully worship the God we read about in Psalm 100:
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
— The Sublime Soiree © November 2025
wonderful thoughts! Happy Thanksgiving!