Dinner invitations

The history of the world in the Bible is framed by two invitations to eat food ready prepared, sandwiching a history of humanity working to put food on the table.

• God creates a garden already planted and bearing fruit and invites Adam and Eve to "eat of every tree of the garden" (Genesis 2:16)
• When they choose to eat food which he had not prepared for them at that time he expels them from the garden and leaves them to feed themselves by hard work and painful toil (3:17-19)
• But he chooses a nation and brings them to a land flowing with milk and honey prepared by him and not by them ("the Lord your God brings you into the land...with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant — and [you will] eat and [be] full", Deuteronomy 6:10-11) But this land was just a shadow because it was still hard work maintaining the land.
• In these end times he says to his messengers "Tell those who are invited, See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast" (Matthew 22:4). Week by week we enjoy the tasters provided at the Lord's Supper even as we hunger to enjoy the full meal.