On holidays like Thanksgiving, many of us will stand for hours over a hot stove, whisk until our wrists ache, or rise early to stuff a bird while everyone else sleeps in. Preparing holiday meals reminds us that cooking isn’t as easy and glamorous as reels and cookbooks would have us believe. It can be time-consuming and physically taxing. Yet even our busiest days of holiday meal prep can’t compare to the work first-century Jews did for their daily bread. “We cannot emphasize enough the challenge of cooking and storing food for the first-century cook” write Douglas E. Neel and Joel A. Pugh in The Food and Feasts of Jesus. The cooks in Jesus’s day worked without gas, electricity, or any of the modern conveniences and appliances that make food preparation so much easier for us today. Neel and Pugh write: The typical household had someone designated to make the bread. That person was a wife or a daughter unless the family was wealthy enough to have slaves or servants bake the bread. She saved a small amount of dough the day before and carefully stored it and used it as the leaven for the next day’s bread. She would light the fire in the bread oven and then begin the task of grinding wheat for flour, making the dough, and mixing in the leaven from the previous day. Once the oven was hot and the fire had burned down, she would sweep out the coals and ashes and replace them with the dough. The oven was warmed to around 800 degrees. All that just to prepare one household’s daily bread! When we understand how grueling and all-consuming food preparation was in the ancient world, we can better understand the crowd’s peculiar reaction to Jesus multiplying the fish and loaves: They tried to make him king (John 6:15). They’d found someone to deliver them from the pain of food preparation. Yet to their disappointment, Jesus didn’t make the miraculous production of food a regular part of his ministry. We no longer live in an era of regular full-day food preparation. We have access to frozen meals and DoorDash conveniences the ancients might have considered miraculous. But before we default to the easiest dinner option, we should ask ourselves what we might gain from embracing food preparation. Psalm 104’s Theology of Food Psalm 104—a poetic commentary on Genesis 1–2—teaches us where food comes from and what we might glean from preparing it. The psalmist explores the eating habits of our fellow creatures, breaking down the animal kingdom into three broad categories similar to Genesis: the beasts that creep on the earth, the birds that fly in the air, and the creatures that swarm in the sea. 1. Food Comes from the Lord Though wildly diverse in biomes and biology, these creatures have one thing in common—they depend on their Creator for food. Referring to all creatures, the psalmist summarizes, “These all look to you, to give them their food in due season” (v. 27). The implications are staggering. The psalmist claims that every time a creature eats, it does so at God’s behest. Even the roar of young lions becomes a prayer to God for daily bread (v. 21). Psalm 104 makes it clear that God provides food any time any of his creatures eats anything. Every salmon snatched by a bear, every minuscule krill caught in the maw of a whale, and every drop of nectar extracted by a hummingbird is edible evidence of God’s benevolence as Creator. He’s the perfect host who provides food for his innumerable guests. God’s real-time provision of food applies to humans too. Like our fellow creatures, we depend on our Creator for every meal we eat. As scholar Norman Wirzba writes, “Whenever people come to the table they demonstrate with the unmistakable evidence of their stomachs that they are not self-subsisting gods. They are finite and mortal creatures dependent on God’s many good gifts.” Procuring food is a mark of dependency, not self-sufficiency. As children of Adam and Eve, we long to be gods. But the pinch in our stomachs testifies to our creatureliness. The daily acts of cooking and eating are good reminders of our creaturely dependence on our Creator God. 2. Food Preparation Is Uniquely Human Yet our menu items differ from what the animals eat. The food we eat must be prepared. God gives “plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth” (v. 14). This food includes wine, oil, and bread, which are often called the Mediterranean triad (v. 15). None of these food items occurs naturally. All must be produced by human hands (or human feet, in the time-honored method of wine-making). Bread doesn’t grow on trees; its dough must be kneaded and baked. Oil doesn’t bubble up from the ground; olives must be mashed to extract oil. Animals don’t sauté, sear, or season what they eat. People do. Animals don’t relish food or peruse cookbooks to consider a creative preparation of a savory meat. People do. For image-bearers, food does more than fill our stomachs. Animals don’t saute, sear, or season what they eat. People do. Wine “[gladdens] the heart of man” and oil “makes his face shine” (v. 15). Or, as Robert Farrar Capon defines it, food is our “daily sacrament of unnecessary goodness.” For humans, food is more than life-giving fuel; it’s also joy-giving beauty. And the creative, often communal, act of preparing food is part of what makes it beautiful. According to Psalm 104, three valuable lessons are baked into the process of cooking and eating: God the Creator is kind and distributes food to all (vv. 10–15, 21–22, 27–28). The need to eat is a sign of creatureliness. We have limits. We aren’t God. Like every other creature, we must regularly eat or we’ll die (vv. 24, 29–30). Though all creatures eat, humans cook, which is one of the many ways we exercise our identity as image-bearers (vv. 14–15). Every minute we spend in the kitchen and every forkful of food we eat testifies to our Creator’s benevolence, our humility as creatures, and our glory as image-bearers. When Convenience Is a Greater Blessing than Food Prep Modern conveniences that make food prep faster and easier can also be a blessing—even a lifesaver for some people. Consider the single mother who works multiple jobs just to afford food for her family. Her life wouldn’t necessarily be improved by spending more time preparing food in the kitchen. The busy family always driving to church, school, or extracurriculars should feel the freedom to order takeout, pick up food in drive-throughs, or heat frozen food in the small windows of time they have—at least some of the time. Yet however busy they are, families should also strive to set aside some nights to cook and eat together. Many other situations benefit from the convenience of fast and easy food: The college kid without access to a fully furnished kitchen, the family living in a part of town without a good grocery store, the weary new mom for whom meal-train deliveries are a lifeline. If we could give the ancient Israelites a bread machine or an endless supply of ground flour, they probably would have received it as a blessing from God. This convenience would have given them more time and energy to worship God or spend with their families. Time-saving technologies aren’t always bad; sometimes they reduce the pain of food prep and allow for more human flourishing. Food preparation time can be a good gift, but it’s not an absolute good for all people in every circumstance. Gratitude While Stuffing Birds For those with the time and resources, preparing food can be spiritually enriching because it ultimately reminds us of all we’ve been given: not only the food itself but the festive time we spend with loved ones as we cook and sup. As you laboriously prepare a Thanksgiving turkey—cooking an aromatic stuffing, filling the bird, and roasting it—let the process lead you to gratitude: for the bird’s life, for the bread and onions and herbs stuffed inside, for the cranberry dressing, and for the human creativity to put unlikely ingredients together in delicious combinations. It’s no coincidence that our holiday for giving thanks is so centered on food and food preparation. Occasions like Thanksgiving encourage us to handle the tangible gifts of God and offer our gratitude as we labor in the kitchen and hold hands in prayer before the meal. It’s no a coincidence that our holiday for giving thanks is so centered on food and food preparation. While it’s normal on Thanksgiving to spend hours preparing a glorious feast we eat in community, undistracted by busyness or screens, the next day we often fall back into hurried patterns of eating food we didn’t prepare and eating on the go or in front of screens. What if we tried to practice slower, more meaningful food prep and enjoyment more often—not just on holidays but as often as we can in everyday life? Regardless of what you eat this Thanksgiving (or any meal after), spend a moment in genuine thanksgiving. Even if preparing food isn’t usually one of the ways you contribute in your household, consider offering to help chop vegetables or set the table. At the very least, make sure to sincerely pray before eating, and eat without the distraction of screens. Pray to God and thank him for the food he’s giving you, and pray in the name of Jesus, the bread of life offered to us without toil or price.