On Progressive Dinners

Tonight, I took my youth on a progressive dinner. I lined up 3 families from our church, which prepared appetizers, the main course, and of course, desserts. I had 14 students a few adults who went around with us. Overall, it was a really great evening of food and fun.

**Quick aside: I was particularly glad to do this tonight because of the fact that so many of our students are not very well-off, financially speaking. It was nice to allow them to enjoy a really good meal and some particular dishes that they might not get to eat very often. Overall, it was a great chance for some of the typical "last" to be treated "first" for a change.**

With progressive dinners, you have to make sure you have one thing: self-control. It's so easy just to fill yourself up at the first house with the appetizers and then not have any room for any of the rest of the food. This was particularly an issue tonight, considering our first house threw out a smorgasbord of food for us. It was extremely difficult not to over-indulge on all the great appetizers that were offered to us. Nevertheless, I was able to remind myself that I had to save room for the "real" meal.

In life, it's easy to over-do it with a lot of things. As humans, we are greedy things, and our flesh craves stuff--even when we don't need it. In 1 John, sin is described as having 3 categories: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. In other words, all of these 3 things revolve around the issue of greed. We feel like we deserve something, and our body wants it even when we don't really need it.

There's nothing inherently wrong with enjoying the pleasures of this world. After all, God is the author of pleasure, and he wants his creatures to be able to be recipients of that pleasure in a certain framework. However, when we do indulge in too much of something, we fill ourselves up with a bunch of junk and don't leave any room for what really satisfies us.

Tonight, I just wanted to keep eating cream-puffs at the first house, but I knew I had to save room for food that was actually good for me. Then, I could enjoy all that the progressive dinner had to offer.

Jesus wants to fill us up. We can have a "cream-puff" or two, but we've got to make sure that we fill up on what truly satisfies us: the Bread of Life.