Dinner on the Porch

Picture an old street in a small town. Families sit on front steps in the evening, sharing food, talking, laughing with the neighbours. Their homes are modest. They don’t look rushed. They look content.

Then picture the driven version of us: the bigger house, the busier calendar, the promise that we will slow down and enjoy life once we have built enough. It is worth asking what we are scaling toward, if the people on that porch already have it.

Proverbs saw this long ago. “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” A simple meal with love beats a feast with tension. The first church lived it too: they were “breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.”

You don’t need to move to the countryside. You need a table, some people you love, and the willingness to slow down long enough to sit at it.