Food is next to Godliness

I know it's supposed to be "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" but you haven't seen my kitchen so I decided to change it. I have always loved to cook. First of all I love food, I am skinny guy with a fat man trying to get out. In fact I have cooked since I was seven years old. There are advantages to being a latch-key kid, you learn to do a lot of stuff other kids don't. When I got to college I ate full meals every day that I cooked myself, I knew how to do my own laundry, how to iron a shirt and sew on a button. Cooking though has always been something that has brought me great joy. When we were getting ready to graduate from Seminary our professors told us that we needed to get a hobby otherwise we would get in a rut or burn out or both. Following their advice I tried exercise at the local health club, but I found it to be more boring than tiring. You stand in a room on a machine going a million miles an hour and getting nowhere. I have belonged to five health clubs in 18 years of ministry, and I hardly went to any of them, might as well of poured the money down the drain. So then I tried collecting old books, but I soon found that original copies are very expensive, so much for that. I tried Karate, interesting but required way to much self discipline. I am a reader so I tried military history, interesting but with a family of four, reading time was not a luxury, plus what do you do with it? Oh I have also tried bike riding, which I still do some but again not that interesting, at least to me. I have also tried hiking, loved it but my knees and my heart complained way to much, plus I really don't have the time in the mornings and in Arizona you don't hike in the afternoons. I think you see where I am going with this. As far as any type of art or pottery or wood work, well I draw stick figures, so not happening.
That brings me back to cooking. I have always cooked, but until recently my wife did most of the dinner cooking and I cooked on special occasions. My wife's hours changed recently and so I found myself in the kitchen every night cooking. I quickly realized that I loved it. In fact it was like therapy, by the time I was done cooking I was relaxed. Slowly cooking went from something I needed to do to feed the family to something that I looked forward to everyday. It has now become my hobby. It is in fact the perfect hobby. I can read and research about cooking, it's history, techniques etc... I can physically do the cooking and practice new things and best of all my family eats good food. It is a win, win. The family needs to eat so any money spent is money that is going to be spent anyway. Plus I have found that I spend less now because of planning and buying in advance and learning how to work with food in more economical ways.
I also read the Bible differently now. I am blown away how so much of Scripture is centered around food. They are always eating and if they are not eating they are complaining about not eating. Jesus is shown eating all the time as well with all types of people. In fact some of his best sermons happen around food. And you wondered where the church pot-luck come from. In the Old Testament treaties and covenants were sealed with food or some sort of sacrfice that involved food. Jesus speaks of himself as food in the New Testament and right before his arrest instituted the Lord's Supper using food. Because of that our church's liturgy has involved the eating of food, bread and wine for over 2000 years now. Food is next to Godliness, we even get picture language of heaven being a great banquet. Therefore I think food and preaching go together hand in hand. Now if I could just get my hands on some of those recipes for the food in heaven.