I knew I was in bother the minute we sat down. It was the last night of the town's festival and everyone was gathered in the local community hall for an evening of food and celebration. After a tour of the many street sellers and sideshows dotted around the perimeter of the outside of the building, we sat down to a meal followed by a variety of items performed for the audience and clearly very enjoyable. But I didn't understand a word. After all, we were in the middle of France, somewhere in the Loire valley, in a little village called Bracieux and my sum total of French vocabulary had been left sitting on a classroom desk over twenty years earlier, never to be returned to in the the intervening period. We had taken about twenty pupils and our staff on a reciprocal visit to our french link school and on the last evening I knew time was running out for our Gallic cousins to involve their Irish friends in some fun. So when the parade of what looked like dignitaries entered to some rather less than formal music, I knew the time, or more correctly my time had come. Within minutes, amid a babble of words, some of which I remembered from my old classroom, I heard my name being uttered, then I was ushered towards the platform. And there, in that little corner of France, I became an honorary member of the Bracieux Frog's Legs eating society, much to the amusement of our party and the others gathered. And I have the presentation plate to prove it!I entered my first Chinese restaurant when I was about sixteen. It was in the days when they only seemed to occupy an upstairs floor in a building and when people were still deeply suspicious about the shape of the meat in their meal. But I had to go all the way to the Isle of Man on a day trip to get my first taste of Chinese cooking and then my mate and I only ordered Chicken Maryland anyway. At that time I don't recall where the closest Chinese restaurant was to home but it might have been the one we were sitting in that day. Yet it was so good, we went back in the late evening for another dose of the same, before shuffling back down to the docks and a slightly uneasy ride home. It was probably a couple of years before I darkened the door of such an oriental food house again, this time in Chester, but the Chicken Maryland tasted just as good there. So it was after quite a few visits to such premises in various locations, having tasted a variety of Chinese renditions of that English dish that I eventually noticed there were other items on the menu that I might actually enjoy. Still, I'm sure I was well over twenty before I realised that Noodles wasn't just the name of a Chinese man's cat, but an entirely delightful dish to enjoy. Since those early days, I have had the opportunity to sample both Oriental, Indian, Australian, French, German, Dutch, Danish, American, Spanish, Portuguese, African, Caribbean and a few other international cuisines and cultures but it all started out in a little island lying somewhere between here and England, when I discovered that there was more to life than the humble potato, even though it was always good enough for my dad.
As we move further into the new millennium and experience at first hand the rapidly expanding breadth of nationalities and their associated cultures, cuisines and languages, that live in our local communities, how important it is to embrace the wealth of diversity that it brings to our society. How many of us now choose to eat in a 'foreign' restaurant, almost in preference to a 'home grown' one and how many of the latter now include noodles and the like as part of the fare that they serve. Yet how important also to remember that embracing culture and cuisine is very different to embracing the religion of others. God makes it quite clear when He issues the command, not a suggestion, to His people by saying, 'You shall have no other gods before me.'
As I watch those children in our school, whose families have come here for a different and hopefully better life, I see them willing to respect and experience our culture but I also see them as people whom God loves and wants to save. Two lovely verses in Romans explain perfectly why we are all equal in His sight.In chapter 23 Paul says, 'This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to ALL who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.' And in chapter 10 he writes, 'For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of ALL and richly blesses ALL who call on him, for, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.' Are you still hungry for Him?
