When I was a child, Sunday dinner was like Thanksgiving! Grandma W. spent Saturdays baking at least 4 pies. She would be up early Sunday peeling potatoes, frying chicken, and making meatloaf. Then she taught Sunday School and went to church. (She’s my hero.)

Afterward, all 6 of her children came to Sunday dinner. Of course, each couple had 2-4 children of their own!

She put all the table leaves in and the adults crowded around it. She had a variety of “TV Trays” and we ate on them with our cousins.

We lived at Bible schools 9 months of the year. I don’t know if she did this all year or just in the summer. After we ate, she sent us outside. On rainy days we played in the barn.

We moved back to Iowa and rented a farmhouse shortly before we lost Grandpa W. Then Mom started making Sunday dinners and Grandma ate with us. She moved in with us for a few months after Grandpa died.

When we had children, I made Sunday dinner. My meals were simpler because I didn’t have a huge garden like Mom and Grandma. (Grandma made her own ketchup!)

My children were not impressed.

Their friends would talk about the restaurant where they would eat after church. I finally gave in, put it in the budget, and we ate out after church. It didn’t turn out the way my children had hoped. Their friends invariably ended up at a different restaurant!

Grandma had the right idea. Some Sundays, she invited the preacher’s family to dinner, too! (One preacher had 7 children!) I should have invited my children’s friends’ families to dinner. That would have been “exuberant and joyful.”

Acts 2:46, “They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful.” The Message

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