I linger over little bits of cake. My gentile version of honey cake, my American girl version of lebkuchen, all thanks to Peg + Cat.

The honey on the cake reminds me of John the Baptist’s least emulated diet ever.

I think of him scooping honey from the hives of desert bees, dipping his locusts in the honey. Wild food for a wild man? Or deliberate food for a grave robber? Was he eating that way as an afterthought or a prophesy?

At table with our enemies.

I don’t know when I began to identify the enemy of Psalm 23 as death and his minions–sickness, pain, grief, and loss, but I do.

These are our true enemies. And the answer, the only answer I have when the pain of this world’s griefs become unthinkable is to look at Jesus at the head of this table and know that he owns the meal: bugs and honey and all.