Nourishing Others - Jonny Pappas
My first memory of loving cooking was in high school at Heritage College. We got a week of electives after exams and I always chose cooking. I loved making something, then eating and enjoying it. I cook at home and started a YouTube channel creating recipes this year, but that’s the extent of my food career.
Food is God-given and such an important part of our daily lives. It’s not just for survival. Food brings so much connection in our lives as well. The metaphor of “you are what you eat” doesn’t just apply to food, but also for our minds. Preparing a meal for yourself doesn’t have the same motivation as cooking for someone else. In the early stages, my spiritual journey was very knowledge-driven so I didn’t connect my passion for cooking with my faith. Now I realize you can serve in a lot more ways with what you’re passionate about and that was a game changer.
God helps develop these passions and gives us gifts that sometimes we haven’t even discovered yet. We need to be open to developing these talents to glorify God. He has designed us with an imagination to be learners and creators. Creating is an important part of cooking. Transforming ingredients into something someone will love takes time and intention. This is what God wants from us too. He created us and loves us already, but wants our time and intention. And like cooking, we don’t need to be perfect to be pleasing.
Part of developing our God-given talents is taking risks, failing, but trying again. It takes confidence in cooking and in life. Some people won’t even try something because they are afraid of failure, but true masters don’t define it as failure. They mess up, tweak a technique, and keep trying. God defines us not by our successes or failures. He is watching for our attempts. A righteous man falls seven times and keeps getting up.
My life felt segmented with different elements all over the place. As I got older, I realized time is precious and I had to combine all these elements (career, relationships, faith, hobbies) into one trajectory for my life. Like combining varying ingredients in a recipe, I plan to be more intentional with my time now.
A recipe can turn out very differently based on the time allotted and the ingredients chosen. If you start with no time and cheap ingredients, then you will end up with a stressful, unenjoyable creation. But if you spend quality time working with simple ingredients they can be transformed into a masterpiece. Likewise, our faith should be simple like a child’s. Proverbs 15:17 tells us, “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it.”
Food pops up in the life of Jesus so much and is used as a gathering point for his ministry. Right before the most exhausting, stressful, painful moment in his life, he wants to share a Passover meal with his closest friends. And even after his death we are pointed forward in Revelation to the marriage supper of the lamb that we still look forward to in the Kingdom. On a side note I imagine Jesus, as a carpenter, would have made many tables that meals would be shared on and perhaps this was in his mind when he spoke about food in his parables. A meal around a table also leads to shared conversation. Friends and family can share life experiences, hopes, dreams, difficulties, ideas and stories around a meal. A shared meal means togetherness and is where connection happens.
Sometimes there are life struggles and suffering where you don’t have the words to say to help someone, but food is always needed. If they want to be alone, you can leave a meal at their doorstep with no conversation, but it could make a difference in their day. This simple act could mean so much to them. We don’t need the answers to their problem, but knowing they need to eat every day shows we care. It’s providing the physical need, but taking a step beyond to provide a spiritual food of showing God’s love. The things of God are simple and real. Proverbs 30:8 tells us, “Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me.” Because God knows our hearts and intentions, the creations we make and the gifts we bestow upon others become offerings to God himself.
To listen to the full podcast with Jonny and Helen check out A Little Faith podcasts.