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During the Saturday edition of CBS This Morning there is a delicious segment called “The Dish”. Each week a chef displays a table of food he or she has prepared. The television hosts sit down with the chef to sample the feast. Afterwards, the chef is handed a white dish to autograph. One of the television anchors then looks at the cook, “If you could have this meal with anyone past or present who would it be?” 

Author Frederick Buechner said, “There is a game we play sometimes. If we could somehow meet one of the great ones of history, which one would we choose? Would it be Shakespeare, maybe, because nobody knew better than he the Hamlet of us and the Ophelia of us, nobody knew better than he this midsummer night’s dream of a darkly enchanted world. Or maybe it would be Abraham Lincoln, with feet no less of clay than our own feet, but whose face, in those last great photographs, seems somehow to have not only all of human suffering in it but traces of goodness and compassion that seem more than human.”

Would meeting a famous person change us? Philip thought so. His encounter with a man who was the talk of the town transformed him. He wanted his friend to also have a life-altering experience. 

“Philip went to look for Nathanael and told him, “We have found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about! His name is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.” 

Nathanael froze Philip’s excitement. “Nazareth!” exclaimed Nathanael. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

When we hear “So and So is the real deal” it puts us at ease. Who hasn’t been disillusioned by someone who turned out to be someone else. However, since life doesn’t provide answers to life’s dilemmas our hunger for truth intensifies.

Buechner continues, “We make our way to where he stands beyond a little grove of trees, whoever we are-a retired school teacher half sick with boredom and loneliness, a young dancer at the peak of her career, an out-of-work black woman facing a mastectomy, a middle-aged couple trying to hold their marriage together, a boy and girl in love. And you and I come with them-like them, the bearers of secrets we have never told, the guardians of memories more precious than gold and sadder than an empty house. As we make our way through the trees, a figure comes into view. It is dusk, and he stands dark against the gray sky. At the sound of our footsteps, he glances our way. (Secrets in the Dark)

Philip responded to Nathanael, “Come and see for yourself.” After meeting Christ, Nathanael asked him, “How do you know about me?” Jesus replied, “I could see you under the fig tree before Philip found you.” (John 1:45-46, 48)

God sees you. The invitation stands. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8, NLT) Have a seat. Discover what He’s prepared for “you”.

Pictures courtesy of pixels.com except for pic inside Chip & Joanna Gaines’ “Magnolia Table” courtesy of “Nelson & his Nikon”