This morning Linda and I had breakfast together. There's nothing unusual about that, except the together part. Sundays Linda either has breakfast with Matt, or Matt and the kids come to our house while Jeanine is rehearsing for the worship team. As often as not, I'm out the door before breakfast begins. Mondays are usually my fast day, Tuesdays I have breakfast with Willie, Wednesday Linda has breakfast with Sue and Beth. That leaves Thursday and Friday together, along with Saturday breakfasts with the grandkids.
Today I had coffee, juice, raisin bran, and toast with peanut butter; a pretty ordinary breakfast. In Cuba, the coffee is espresso, the meal is banana, papaya, mango, with eggs, dry toast, and tropical fruit jelly or honey. Years ago when we visited England, breakfast consisted of eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, sausage, and coffee. I don't even want to talk about breakfast in Mongolia. It's not a pleasant memory.
Today I'm thankful for an ordinary breakfast. The word is self-explanatory: it's the meal that breaks the fast from the night before. There are millions of people around the world who cannot imagine the amount of, nor the ease with which we have, this first meal of the day. Raisin bran is pretty ordinary stuff, but prepared cereals are relatively new in human history. I reach for the box, pour the cereal into a bowl, add milk, and voila! Breakfast! Someone grew the wheat and grapes, raised the cows that gave the milk; all was transported from the farm to the processing plants where hundreds of others turned the raw materials into flakes and raisins, packaged them and transported them to the warehouses and stores. Someone designed the packaging, others stocked and sold the product. Then there's the coffee! For about a dollar a day, I eat a pretty good breakfast.
Where else in the world or at what other time in history has this been possible? We rarely think about all that goes into such a simple and ordinary meal. We ordinarily give thanks before we eat. Today, I am thinking about that for which I am giving thanks. What is ordinary is in reality, quite extraordinary.
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