Lilies in the Valley: Our Bethlehem Supper

December 31, 2010

Our Bethlehem Supper

   Last Saturday my mother-in-law flew into town to stay for a few days. I wanted to make a special dinner for us all to have and sometime on Friday I decided to make a Bethlehem Supper. I got this idea in an email from a homeschooling mom named Diane (link to her blog post for the Bethlehem Supper (including the super-simple recipe for pitas!) here). It was very last minute but a lot of tasty fun. We had a variety of Israeli foods like falafel with cucumber sauce, pitas, Old Jerusalem Chicken Soup (I tweaked this one a bit), challah bread, hummus, dried figs, grapes, and of course pomegranates! It was all homecooked by yours truly except for the challah (which was made by my oldest daughter), the hummus (which was store bought), and the fruit--which was made by God. For a beverage we drank Pomegranate Red Tea by Honest Tea because I already had several bottles of it from a good sale at the local grocery store a few months ago. Grandma and the girls helped out in the kitchen but even with the extra hands on board, the cooking took all day. When the meal and table were ready, I was so ready to sit down that we forgot to put on some Messianic Israeli-style music (Marty Goetz, anyone?) for ambiance, though we did listen to the Shalom Jerusalem CD all day in the kitchen. Oh well. We had a great time and had enough left-overs to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the remainder of Grandma's stay!
   The evening ended with a Pomegranate Presentation by Tom. He had browsed some resources beforehand on his Accordance Bible Software and came up with some interesting trivia on the pomegranate that he presented to us as he cut and prepared a pomegranate for us all to eat. This was the first fresh pomegranate we had ever eaten and it was very good, though tricky to prepare! The trivia included the fact that the pomegranate has represented law and judgement since ancient times and especially in the Bible. This is because the average number of seeds inside a pomegranate (613) is the same as the number of commandments in the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament). Solomon's Temple was decorated with pomegranates and the High Priest's robes had pomegranates embroidered along the hem (Exodus 28:34, 39:26). The pomegranate is listed in Deuteronomy 8:8 as one of the products the promised land of Israel would produce. It is thought that the "crown" on the bottom of the pomegranate inspired the design of Solomon's crown and the crown of kings across many cultures. It's fitting that the pomegranate is blood red inside and out, since the shedding of blood is required for the remission of our sins which are violations of God's Law (1 John 3:4 and Hebrews 9:22). And of course Jesus shed His own blood dying in our place after He fulfilled the law for us, making peace between God and those who trust in Jesus alone for salvation.
   Below are some pictures of our feast.