Do you eat breakfast?
It’s the most important meal of the day that nobody has time to fix. Most mornings it’s a fiber-rich, low sugar cereal for me with bananas or some other fruit. Breakfast literally breaks the fast you put your body on through the night. It wakes sleeping organs, alerts the body for action, and nudges brain cells to start firing their signals throughout their vast network.
Today I’m thinking about a breakfast on the shores of Galilee with Jesus. Do you remember how it happened?
“I’m going fishing.” Peter said early one morning in the fresh days of processing resurrection truth. Seven other disciples stopped twiddling their thumbs and welcomed the familiar activity and followed him.
Some say they weren’t supposed to go fishing; they were supposed to be waiting. But then, they’ve never been fishing, have they?
All night they threw the nets, pulled them in empty. All night! By morning they were hungry, tired, frustrated, and probably a little cranky.
Dawn grazed the shoreline with just enough light to see a figure and a fire. A voice followed:
“Caught anything?”
“No!” came the don’t-rub-it-in reply.
“Try the other side.”
Was this faceless figure crazy? They looked at each other with wordless s agreement to fend off a debate they didn’t want to have later; they threw the net, watched weighted edges grab water and sink, let the net settle and expected the easy pull they had repeated all night.
Not this time. This time, they pulled fish. A whole net full of fish!
That’s when memory kicked in. This had happened before when the fishing partners met Jesus for the first time.
John was first out of the boat splashing to shore where he found Jesus, a hot coal fire and fresh fish and bread cooking.
“Bring some of your fish for the fire and let’s have breakfast.”
I don’t know where you are as you read this, what all-night work you’ve been doing, what waiting you’ve endured, what loss has robbed your normal, what restlessness or confusion hovers; but I know that breakfast with Jesus is what you need.
“Come! Let’s have breakfast,” Jesus said to the disciples, and he says it to us. Let Jesus break the fast of your dark night, your long wait, your loss, your hungry heart. Watch him lift bread and break it. Remember the multitudes he fed or the night he changed Passover forever.
“Take. Eat.”
Communion. Soul-feast. An end to some fast.
A beginning to something new.
Never refuse an invitation to break a fast with Jesus. Add your meager to his plenty. Find nourishment, understanding, and comfort. Whatever you need, he has.
And there’s always enough.