Love and hate can change anything. Love can make a simple meal into something wonderful. Hate can make a feast unappetizing. The proverb here implies that the meal has more than one person and assumes that several family members are sharing a meal. “Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred.” My mother would often say, “You can choose your friends, but you cannot choose family.” However, I can choose to practice love even when I do not like a family member’s life choices.
Jesus once prophecied, “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:49-53) Choosing Jesus as Lord and Savior may start a family baptism of fire.
When I did just that some forty years ago my mother was not at all happy and my siblings thought I was strange. I prayed for them for many years. Eventually, I saw my father and older brother turn to God and God flew me one thousand miles to see my sister living in Texas be baptized. I look forward to a day when we share a loving meal together, especially those of us still living before one of us passes. Persistent prayers change a disaster meal into a feast.
