In today's GB News Daily Reflection, Anglican vicar of Crofton parish, Richard England, recalls sharing time with impoverished street children in Mozambique.
That experience helped him appreciate the Christian belief that sharing meals can break down barriers, pointing to how Jesus Christ used meals to build relationships, welcome outsiders, and invite people into faith.
“It was 20 years ago. I was visiting Mozambique in southern Africa. The organisation I was with took me and some friends on an evening outreach into the capital, Maputo.
“We met lots of people that evening, but one gathering stuck in my memory. They are a group of young boys who sleep rough in the city park. Each day, they would beg for what they could, then gather in the park for safety. Each night.
“They reminded me of a sad version of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan. We met them as they were cooking their evening meal, which was the raw, leftover chicken they'd been able to scrounge from local restaurants, boiled in used tin cans over an open fire, a meal time with others, even as poor as those boys were.
“This can be a profound way to break down barriers. Jesus ate with people from all kinds of backgrounds. This scandalised the good religious folk of his time.
“But some of those meals were life-changing. We wouldn't have the Gospel of Matthew without such a meal.
“Jesus even uses the image of a meal to describe Christian faith. Open the door of your life, he says, and I will come in and eat with you and you with me.
“It's easy to withdraw into our own homes and our own lives, but perhaps the simple act of sharing a meal with someone different to us can be life-changing.”
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