Shelburne Cross Currents column: Best memories often involve meals
“Please remove Lloyd Boyll from your magazine’s mailing list,” the note requested. “He died last month.” Although I had known that Lloyd had been battling multiple old-man ailments, I was sorry to get that news.
But my first reaction to it was not sadness. Instead, in my heart and head, I was back at a sandwich/coffee shop in downtown Indianapolis with my dear friend Leo Miller. Over forty years ago he had taken me there to meet Lloyd for the first time. The friendship we initiated that day lasted for all the decades since.
Indiana was also the stage for another treasured memory. “Ellen Thomas used to cook apples that way,” my lady commented as we ate supper. I confess that I remembered nothing about dear Ellen’s apple recipe, but I’ll never forget that blessed morning when Nita and I joined Ellen at the breakfast table in her country home. Long after the eggs and bacon had been consumed, we sat and shared memories of Ellen’s remarkable husband, Gerald, who then was in the last stages of Alzheimer’s.
“Bring him the biggest T-bone steak you have,” Dean Smith sneaked around behind my back and told the owner/chef at the country café known as Lowake Inn. I’d ordered a modest piece of meat, but that night the waitress brought me half a cow. I’ll never forget how much fun Dean and Lois and others at our table had that night as they teased me.
By now do you detect the common denominator in these tales?
Meals and memories. I could fill a book with similar stories, all of them about memories of special friends with whom I shared meals. It’s the same for you, isn’t it? The bulk of your best memories are about meals and the people who dined with you. It works that way for all of us.
Does this help us see the genius of Jesus when he chose a meal as the way to be sure that his followers would always remember him? When our Lord and his disciples were sharing a Passover meal, he gave them bread to eat and wine to drink, and told them, “Do this in memory of me.”
All around the globe those of us who wear the name of Jesus still eat and drink to remember him. And it works. Over and over, the holy meal revives the memory.
Gene Shelburne is pastor emeritus of the Anna Street Church of Christ, 2310 Anna Street, Amarillo, Texas. Contact him at GeneShel@aol.com, or get his books and magazines at www.christianappeal.com. His column has run on the Faith page for more than three decades.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Shelburne column: Best memories often involve meals
